Deborah Bloomfield

For some of us more than others, waking up in the morning is a special kind of torture. Your alarm blares its anthem into your head; the sunlight blasts in at you through the window; you try in vain to burrow back down into your bedcovers but alas, your boss, or kids, or partner, or, […]

Leonardo da Vinci was, by any metric, a genius – but he was still limited by his time. The man may have been a secret authority on anatomy, music, art, engineering, and even frickin’ paleogeography, but we wouldn’t expect him to understand the best way to, say, design an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – that is, […]

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It’s hard to find a single common denominator that links all human societies and underpins all of our achievements as a species, but some scientists think that alcohol may be the most likely candidate. Known as the “drunk hypothesis”, this idea is based on the rationale that booze enhances social bonding and creativity, and that […]

If you go down to the ocean today, you might just be in for a big surprise. From deep-sea disco worms to orcas giving each other kelp massages, there’s no end to what the ocean can offer. Some of the more unusual characters to be found include fish species that can walk, and one of […]

Love black olives but turn your nose up at the green ones? We have news for you: they’re fundamentally the same thing. In fact, some so-called “black olives” aren’t naturally different from their green comrades at all; they’ve just been artificially altered with chemicals to give them a jet-black color and milder taste.  Botanically, green […]

Between the orbits of Saturn and Neptune, there is a population of minor space bodies known as the Centaurs. There could be up to 10 million of them, but they tend to have unstable orbits due to the gravitational influences of the giant planets. Occasionally, some enter a temporary stable orbit, joining one of the […]

A video filmed in Canada appears to show a strange glowing blue-white orb oscillating as it slowly moved across a field. Ed and Melinda Pardy, weather enthusiasts from Alberta, Canada, were attempting to look for funnel clouds after a recent storm when they spotted the highly unusual orb in a field behind their property. According […]

Forty-six years after it was first recorded, the magnetic data collected by Voyager 1 as it sailed past Jupiter, crossing its bow shock, continues to be hauntingly beautiful. You don’t need to know anything about particles, magnetic fields, bow shocks, or anything else to appreciate the weirdness of it and how the fateful crossing shifts […]

The universe is, as you are probably already aware, pretty big. Though we have found absolute proof of life on precisely one planet (intelligent life, still uncertain), there is plenty of hope that there are intelligent beings out there in the cosmos, potentially seeking other lifeforms themselves. While the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) continues […]

There are some great animal mysteries on Planet Earth. Where do whale sharks give birth? How did the starfish become a star? How did this mystery circle form? One such mystery is related to one of the slowest creatures in the world: are sloths too slow to fart? Sloths have super slow digestion and metabolism […]

There’s rarely a quiet moment in Yellowstone. With constantly shifting geology and ever-bubbling hot springs, this sprawling landscape across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho is no stranger to underground activity. But according to a new study, Yellowstone Caldera may be even more active than scientists previously realized. Scientists at the University of Western Ontario, Industrial University […]

China has broken ground on what is set to be the largest hydropower dam ever built. In size and output, the megadam will dwarf the current world record holder, the mighty Three Gorges Dam. The gigantic new structure is being built on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in the Tibet Autonomous Region of […]

Dealing with challenging times can make us feel we’ve aged decades in just a few months. The last five years of the COVID-19 pandemic certainly qualify as challenging times for most, and a new study is suggesting that that feeling of rapid aging might be more than just a feeling. If these results are borne […]

Tigers are stripy, leopards and cheetahs are spotty – that’s something many of us will have been taught as fact from an early age. But if there’s one thing we can say for sure about nature, it’s that things aren’t always as certain as they seem, and scattered across southern Africa is a rare big […]

Planetary scientists using NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter, have reported the discovery of a new type of plasma phenomenon. It appears that around the north pole of the gas giant planet there is “underdense” plasma that is behaving in a way that has not been seen elsewhere. The cause of these waves […]

Two new moons have been discovered orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total number of natural satellites orbiting the gas giant to 97. The first moons of Jupiter were discovered in 1610 CE, after Galileo Galilei created and used his own telescope to observe the largest planet in the Solar System. He observed the four largest moons […]

There is far more variation in the way the brains of pessimists operate from each other than those of optimists, a new study finds. In other words, those who see life through a positive lens tend to use the same rose-colored glasses, whereas pessimists are more original and creative in their negative outlook. The findings […]

In 1929, it was discovered that a galaxy’s redshift is proportional to its distance from us. This breakthrough provided a method to measure the distances of far-off galaxies and revealed that most are moving away, offering strong evidence for an expanding universe. This knowledge, as well as helping us learn about the shape of the […]

An experimental mRNA vaccine that supercharges existing cancer treatments could be laying the groundwork for a “universal” cancer vaccine, according to the team behind the breakthrough.  Scientists at the University of Florida tested the innovation in mice and found it provoked a strong antitumor response when paired with immunotherapy. The surprising part was that the […]