Deborah Bloomfield

What happened to crop circles? There was a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s when you couldn’t stroll through a sci-fi field without encountering the odd patterns pressed into the crop. From The X-Files and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs to alarmed media reports from rural spots in North America, the UK, Russia, Japan, and […]

Eris – a new COVID variant – is emerging in the UK amid a nationwide rise in cases and hospital admissions. First classified as a variant last month, Eris, or EG.5.1, is a subvariant of Omicron and has since been added to the World Health Organization’s “variants under monitoring” list. According to data from the […]

Amongst the remains of the Neanderthal inhabitants of a cave in France, researchers have uncovered a hip belonging to a modern human baby. However, after noticing differences between the ancient ilium and that of more recent neonates, the authors of a new study say the infant may represent a previously unknown early lineage of Homo […]

There’s a well-worn stereotype that women cry more often than men. It’s not a fantastically helpful stereotype, but it certainly is persistent. And, as it turns out, there could be a biological reason behind it: some research has suggested that higher levels of testosterone could inhibit crying. Crying as a response to strong emotions appears […]

Scientists have exploited the properties of a material to create an “extra dimension” that allows them to better control waves passing through it. Using the concept of synthetic dimension, scientists have developed a new metamaterial that can better control mechanical surface waves, with very interesting applications. As the name implies, these waves travel along the […]

Last December, for the first time, researchers had a controlled nuclear fusion reaction that put out more energy than needed to be started. It has been reported that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) team did it again in a second test on July 30, where they achieved an even higher energy output. The second experiment […]

It’s the topic of the moment. Whether you thought it meant something NSFW (naughty naughty) or whether you just find it maddening, there’s no escaping it: “phubbing” is a definite candidate for Word of the Year (according to the very unofficial IFLScience rankings). But, in case you’ve missed out, let’s take one last voyage of […]

Astronomers have observed a giant star system, probably composed of a pair of stars, that is far too bright for the distance over which we see it. According to a yet-to-be-published paper, the star is being gravitationally lensed by something massive between us and it. However, with no suitably placed galaxies to do the job, […]

The Sun goes through a cycle of activity of about 11 years, from being quiet during the solar minimum to a bustling period full of flares, plasma releases, and sunspots during the solar maximum. You might have noticed that there has been an uptick in news stories about solar storms and northern lights over the […]

Megalodon vs Mosasaurus, it’s a tough call. This hypothetical conflict takes place below the waves, where the currents of time merge to pit two of nature’s ancient aquatic titans against one another. While these giant prehistoric monstrosities both ruled different epochs in Earth’s history, the question of who would emerge victorious in a fight has […]

As much as we may love them, cats are major reservoirs of zoonotic infections, and their bites and scratches can pose a serious threat to our health. It’s a sad truth that one UK-based man found out the hard way after he was bitten by a stray cat and contracted an extensive soft tissue infection caused […]

The confusing world of fruits and vegetables is full of some surprising, and frankly delicious, specimens, from strawberries and tomatoes to asparagus. But which of these fruits could be classed as the world’s biggest? We take a look at some whoppers of the fruit world.  A new entrant To start us off, a new whopper […]

Even though x is one of the least-used letters in the English alphabet, it appears throughout American culture – from Stan Lee’s X-Men superheroes to “The X-Files” TV series. The letter x often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing – just look at Elon Musk with SpaceX, Tesla’s Model […]

India has crossed a major milestone in the quest to become the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the Moon. Having launched on July 14, the Chandrayaan-3 mission entered lunar orbit on August 5. Touchdown is scheduled to take place on August 23 or 24. The United States, the Soviet Union, and China […]

The permafrost of east Eurasian mountains is slowly melting away, helping to reveal the buried bodies of the much-feared Mongol Empire – as well as their unquenchable thirst for yak milk.  Research has studied the remains of a cemetery at the so-called Khorig site, located high in the Khovsgol mountains. Dating suggests that the cemetery […]

READER QUESTION: We now know from evolutionary science that humanity has existed in some form or another for around 2 million years or more. Homo sapiens are comparatively new on the block. There were also many other human species, some which we interbred with. The question is then inevitable – when can we claim personhood […]

Well, that didn’t take long. Having picked up what they called Voyager 2’ “Heartbeat” on Wednesday, by Friday NASA had restored communications. It seems you can’t keep a good spacecraft down, and Voyager 2 is undoubtedly one of the best. After visiting Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and returning arguably the richest treasure trove of scientific […]

There are few things more difficult than studying the end of the world, and how humanity would react before it. If you try when the world isn’t ending, then you probably won’t get an accurate impression, given that the world isn’t really ending. If you try while the world is actually ending, people won’t be that […]