Deborah Bloomfield

If you have binoculars and dark skies, right now you might be able to catch two comets. Better still, one is brightening enough that it may be visible to the naked eye within a few weeks. The history of comet watching offers plenty of warnings, but there are also reasons for optimism. At the same […]

Twelve years ago, a volcanic eruption almost totally wiped out life on an island in the Pacific. Now, in the wake of the devastation, scientists are using genetic analysis to see how flora managed to bounce back on the scarred island.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe […]

An incredibly badass photo that’s emerged from the 2025 Ocean Photographer Of The Year competition shows a juvenile orca going above and beyond as it hunts a harbour seal despite being at an age where most orcas are still relying on milk. That this powerful image earned photographer Yifan Ling second place in the wildlife […]

Sky lovers assemble! There is a lot going on in the next few days – stuff for every interest, location, and ability. We have a very awkward partial solar eclipse (best for literal seals), the equinox bringing forth the fall in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern, and some planetary shenanigans. The rest […]

Deep snows prevent the release of carbon dioxide from boreal forests, but when the snows are shallower it can escape, making global heating almost impossible to stop. However, reindeer and their wild counterparts caribou greatly reduce this problem, provided they are allowed to graze freely, new research indicates. The most frightening scenarios for the global […]

The hadal zone isn’t named after Hades – the Greek god of the underworld – for nothing. Starting 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) beneath the waves, this murky deep-sea environment is one of the deadliest habitats on Earth, with pressure levels that would crush a human body in an instant. And yet, an abundance of animals […]

Finding a mate in any species can be a challenge. Whether you need to fight off rivals, throw down the song performance of a lifetime, or simply be at the right place at the right time, animal mating is undoubtedly complex. The situation is even difficult for common species like garden snails, as poor Ned […]

NASA has announced a new milestone in the hunt for planets around other star systems, known as “exoplanets”. Humanity has been looking at the stars for a long time, but the earliest detections of planets orbiting around them have come in the last century, with improvements to telescope technology. But when we first made a […]

It’s hard enough to know what Neanderthals looked like, let alone sounded like. However, there’s good reason to suspect our extinct hominin cousins were capable of complex language – and not just grunts and groans.  You may be one of the millions of people who have seen the viral clip from the BBC show Neanderthal: […]

Astronomers have a new explanation for the strange behavior of the double star system V Sagittae, which has puzzled them for more than a century. The discovery suggests that Earthlings could soon be treated to two separate shows, once when the system’s white dwarf undergoes a nova explosion, and then again when it becomes a […]

Scientists these days are generally obliged to abide by high ethical standards, requiring them to prevent harm and conduct experiments morally, for instance, seeking informed consent from experiment participants. But stricter guidelines and ethics boards are a relatively recent development, and were often built in response to ethically dubious and morally abhorrent experiments conducted in […]

Around 2 million years ago, prehistoric humans in East Africa turned the tables on the carnivores that had previously terrorized them, learning not only to fend off these predators but also steal their kills, thus replacing them at the very top of the food chain. Generally, the ancient species Homo habilis is credited with making […]

The composition of crystals in volcanic rocks changes with their ages in ways that correlate with the Solar System’s movements around the Milky Way, scientists have reported. If the relationship is a real one, the findings would help us understand both our planet and our galaxy better, and prove a link between the two. The […]

Astronomers have seen something they did not expect: an Einstein Cross with not just the standard four images, there was an extra one. This unprecedented present might allow astronomers to better understand dark matter, the hypothetical substance believed to permeate the cosmos, outweighing the regular matter that makes us by a factor of five. What […]

Last week, NASA called a press conference for the Perseverance rover team to make an exciting announcement; the “clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars”. Further analysis continues on the potential biosignatures, attempting to rule out non-biological explanations, but while we wait there is plenty of time for speculation on what such […]

The longest-living mammal is the bowhead whale, a giant, Arctic-dwelling species that’s bigger than a bus, with evidence suggesting they can live over 200 years. That means there are currently bowhead whales swimming around Alaska that were alive when Moby-Dick was written in 1851.  Researchers know about the longevity of bowhead whales thanks to several […]

An entirely new kind of virus has been detected in bats in Queensland, Australia, during routine monitoring of flying foxes. The virus is a kind of henipavirus, and only the fourth of its kind to ever be isolated and grown in a lab. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in […]

On February 13, 2023, the sky across France and England was briefly illuminated by a small meteor burning. It was slightly less than 1 meter (3 feet) across, and then known as Sar 2667. It is now asteroid 2023 CX1, the first cosmic object that we have tracked from its discovery to its destruction, and […]

Scientists digging in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert have discovered a new species of pachycephalosaur. Normally, a new species would be exciting news enough, but this fossil is reshaping what we know about the history of these dinosaurs. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. […]

The ozone hole over Antarctica is healing. The latest update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows the ozone layer remains on track to fully recover within this century, all thanks to science and international action. The latest WMO Ozone Bulletin says the ozone hole in 2024 was significantly smaller than in previous years. While […]