Deborah Bloomfield

If you’ve ever wondered how many ants there are on Earth, then look no further: there are approximately 20 quadrillion ants currently on planet Earth, according to the latest scientific estimate.  How many ants are there in the world? The figure of 20 quadrillion comes from a study published in the journal Proceedings of the […]

Have you ever been longing for a nap all day, and once you have one, you wake up feeling terrible? Well, it is probably all to do with sleep inertia. There are many benefits to a little cat nap in the middle of the day. It is known to reduce stress, improve our mood, boost […]

Some areas of the world are particularly rich in dinosaur fossils, and while some finds are spectacular or of particular scientific importance, some are just downright confusing. A new discovery in Mongolia fits into the latter category, with an unusual fossil of a theropod dinosaur hand that has some peculiar features.  At the Pigeon Hill […]

Amid the smashed ruins of an ancient town sacked by ISIS, archeologists have returned and yielded all kinds of ancient artifacts. Among the new relics discovered at the site are ones from a 3,000-year-old temple that was dedicated to Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, who’s the goddess with the earliest written evidence. […]

In today’s fast-paced world, finding effective ways to manage stress and achieve better sleep can seem like an impossible challenge. Thankfully, Apollo Neuro, a new company pioneering discoveries in neuroscience to make products to improve mental health and well-being, has arrived on the scene with its groundbreaking wearable device. The Apollo wearable offers a holistic […]

There is a rising trend of people in health misinformation circles on the internet claiming that vitamin K does not exist and therefore babies should not be given this injection at birth, despite it being standard practice approved by the CDC. There have always been disgruntled people on the internet that do not like this […]

Archaeologists and computer scientists have worked together to create an artificial intelligence (AI) program capable of translating ancient cuneiform texts. The researchers say their goal is for the program to form part of a “human-machine collaboration”, which will assist future scholars in their study of archaic languages. Cuneiform is thought to be the oldest writing […]

For the first time, scientists have successfully transplanted an organ that’s been frozen and “defrosted.” The novel feat has only been performed on lab rats so far, but the researchers believe it could someday boost the availability of human organs for life-saving transplants. Organs can be preserved through long-term cryopreservation methods like vitrification, a process […]

A 4,000-year-old solar calendar sanctuary has been unearthed by archaeologists in the Netherlands who have described it as the first of its kind. The size of four football pitches, this vast religious site appears to have been constructed so the sun shines straight through certain passages on the main burial mounds on the winter and […]

Poison frogs are famous for a lot of things: intense bright colors, tadpole cannibalism, and of course the toxins they secrete through their skin. Wearing teeny tiny trackable frog pants, however, hasn’t been one of them – until now. To explore how males and females of three different species of poison frog are using their […]

Polar bears have long been the poster animal and early warning system for all things climate change. We asked experts what is really going on with the “white hairy canaries” of the Arctic.  Host Eleanor Higgs spoke with Alysa McCall, Polar Bears International Staff Scientist and Director of Conservation Outreach, on the polar bear monster […]

Located in Southern Mauritius, in the village of Chamarel, the Seven Colored Earth Geopark is home to a roughly 7-million-year-old, one-of-a-kind geological marvel. In keeping with Earth’s penchant for making things rainbow-colored, the sand dunes of Seven Colored Earth are aptly named due to their striking display of seven distinct colors. Thought to have formed […]

June 24, 2022, was a watershed moment in US legal and medical history. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding the state of Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks, in a case known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. By so doing, the court effectively ended the constitutional right to abortion in […]

Astronomers have reconstructed the global chemical composition of our galaxy to understand how it compares to other galaxies in the Universe. It turns out that it is not unique, but it is certainly unusual. This is something that alien astronomers would be able to pick up, and that we can use to understand the peculiar […]

Stars have been seen to die in three ways. Small ones turn into white dwarfs after having exhausted their fuel and swelling up into red giants. Bigger ones explode in supernovae, forming black holes or neutron stars, or even leaving nothing behind. And then star and stellar remnants in binary systems can merge and go […]

Your average ape-admirer will probably have a hard time spotting the difference between a bonobo and a chimpanzee. In fact, until relatively recently, bonobos were simply known to scientists as “pygmy chimpanzees” and their own name wasn’t widely used until the 1950s. However, it’s now clear that there are some notable differences between these two […]

There are, in certain corners of the Internet, people out there who believe that the Smithsonian Museum are covering up evidence that Ancient Egyptians came over to the Grand Canyon, leaving hieroglyphs and mummies hidden for thousands of years. The conspiracy theory goes back further than most, to 1909, when readers of the Arizona Gazette […]

From the solstice onward, the length of day and night change. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, yesterday was the summer solstice, which means that the day length is slowly but surely going to decrease over the next six months. But if you are a lover of sunsets, you might already know a particular […]

The largest glacier in Iceland can be found in the Vatnajökull National Park, and a “snake” lurks within it in the form of an ice cave. Its spectacular nickname is the Anaconda Ice Cave for its long and winding shape that mirrors that of the world’s girthiest snakes. It’s also known as Crystal Ice Cave […]

Two cultured meat companies have announced that US regulators have given them the green light to begin selling to the public, marking a huge milestone in the future of no-kill meat. Made only from animal cells, both Good Meat and Upside Foods have stated that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved their lab-grown chicken […]