Deborah Bloomfield

An ancient Babylonian letter from a student to his mother is being shared around TikTok at the moment, largely due to how funny it is. The letter, written by student Iddin-Sin to his mother Zinû, gives a snippet of life in 18th century BCE Mesopotamia. Iddin-Sin was away from his mother at the time of […]

Every now and then, the robots we’ve sent to Mars stumble across an interesting rock formation on their journeys across the surface. Occasionally – as you’d expect when studying the geology of a whole other planet – it is something really interesting. In June, for example, the Mars Perseverance rover snapped several images of a […]

Astronomers have discovered a new type of cosmic explosion. Extremely bright, quick to fade away, and in an old galaxy where massive stars going supernova shouldn’t happen, the event – called AT2022aedm – might have been caused by a peculiar collision. The event seemed like a supernova, the explosive death of a star, but it […]

Steer clear of peregrine falcons during nesting season, unless you want to end up like a pelican that stars in the winning photo of Bird Photographer of the Year 2023. Titled “Grab the bull by the horns”, the dramatic shot was captured by US photographer Jack Zhi who scoops Gold Award Winner and Bird Photographer […]

On August 23, India became the fourth nation to successfully soft land on the Moon and the first to do so close to the lunar South Pole. The lander Vikram and the rover Pragyan have completed their primary mission and they are now in sleep mode, facing their first lunar night and hoping that they […]

Swimmers have been saved from pee thanks to a popular myth that there exists a kind of urine indicator dye for pools that changes color if and when anyone decides to take a sneaky whizz. While a handy deterrent, no such indicator dye has ever existed, but that didn’t stop the myth from becoming feared […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an urgent warning after five people were killed by flesh-eating bacteria that live in waters along the East Coast of the US.  The CDC’s health warning is designed to alert US healthcare providers, laboratories, and public health departments about recent infections by Vibrio vulnificus (V. […]

Astronomers have measured the most distant magnetic field of a galaxy yet. The light of this object has traveled for 11 billion years to get to us, and it carried the information of what the magnetic field of this galaxy was like. An incredible discovery. Magnetic fields play a very important role in the evolution […]

If they didn’t already exist, octopuses might make great sci-fi creatures. They are super-smart, sometimes venomous, and let’s be honest, just the number of tentacles alone is a Doctor Who villain-level of freaky.  When it comes to more scientific explanations, why are octopuses so out-of-this-world? One reason is that they are master editors – not […]

A rare cache of Roman weapons has been discovered stashed away in a cave in the Judean Desert. There, tucked away in a rocky hiding place, researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ariel University retrieved four 1,900-year-old swords, still inside their leather scabbards. It’s thought the weapons were war booty, hidden by Judean rebels within […]

A few weeks ago, the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover successfully touched down on the lunar surface, making India the fourth nation on Earth to land successfully on the Moon, and the first to land near the south pole.  Since then, the mission aimed at primarily examining the composition of the lunar soil has detected sulfur, […]

A global study looking at cancer diagnoses in the under 50s has found that early onset cancer has increased by 79.1 percent between 1990 and 2019.  The team, including experts from around the world, used data from the Global Burden of Disease dataset from 204 countries for their research. They found that during the studied […]

A uniquely leggy dinosaur dating back 150 million years may have adapted to swamp life by evolving to have a lower leg twice as long as its thigh. The trait has never been seen in dinosaurs before and indicates this new-to-science species was either an extremely fast runner or used to wade through swampy environments […]

There is a type of bamboo known as henon, Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, which only flowers once every 120 years. Though this may seem like a long time to put off flowering, the bamboo dies shortly afterward, so let’s not be so quick to judge. With a gap of over a century between flowering, botanists […]

An oil pipeline megaproject is planned to carve through East Africa despite major concerns about how it will impact the climate, local communities, and biodiversity.  The East Africa Crude Oil Export Pipeline (EACOP) is a planned pipeline that’s set to run for 1,443 kilometers (896 miles) between oilfields on the shores of Lake Albert in […]

Each year, it seems like more and more environmental devastation is happening across the globe: we have seen summer heatwaves, emperor penguins failing to breed due to the lack of sea ice, and many wildfires. So, there has never been a greater need for effective sustainability practices.  As such, sustainability has been a big discussion […]

Remember the days when a long drive in high summer would make your car’s windshield look like the site of an insect massacre? If you’ve noticed that this sight is becoming increasingly uncommon, you’re not alone. Ecologists have also discovered a decline in the number of bug splatters on car windows, and some believe that […]

If you’ve ever thrown a ball, climbed a tree, or reached the cereal off the top shelf in the supermarket you could have apes to thank. Research looking into the downclimbing habitats of monkeys and apes has suggested that the shoulders and flexible elbows that evolved in apes helped our ancestors reach the ground without […]

Your fingertips remember the things you touch, and this memory affects how sensory information is relayed to the brain. Now, new research is demonstrating just how important this concept could be to our ability to perform everyday tasks that most of us hardly even think about. An action as simple as picking up your coffee […]

On the Moon, as well as several robots, some tardigrades, a family photograph, and maybe even some dinosaur remains, you will find 96 bags of human poop. On the way up to the Moon, Apollo astronauts collected their urine in tanks, while anyone who needed to poop had to strap a bag over their anus […]