Deborah Bloomfield

At 10:02 am on August 27, 1883, an island in Indonesia collapsed as tsunamis sent 46-meter (151-foot) waves tearing into the ocean as far as South Africa. It marks the moment in history that the infamous Krakatoa volcano erupted, kicking off what’s thought to have been the loudest sound ever. Krakatoa once sat midway between […]

If you’ve ever played 20 Questions, chances are you’ve come across the starting phrase: animal, vegetable, or mineral? But in which category would you put a pearl? Pearls might be the queen of gems and the gem of queens according to Grace Kelly, but what are they technically classed as? Unlike the average gemstone found […]

2023 not only marks the 20th anniversary of the Human Genome Project’s completion but also the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA itself. Although this is a significant year for the celebration of the biological sciences and all they have achieved since these milestone events, it is important to remember the […]

A routine archaeological excavation in Cambridgeshire, England, has uncovered a particularly gruesome and rare discovery: a comb carved from the bone of a human skull.  One of only three such examples ever discovered in the country, the “startling” find has archaeologists rethinking Iron Age community rituals in Cambridgeshire, England.  Advertisement While you might think something […]

Imagine a world where you can see the words people are speaking. We don’t mean on TV where an increased number of viewers are using subtitles to follow their favorite shows, we mean literally seeing words in the air. This phenomenon is a reality for some people and is known as ticker tape synesthesia (TTS).  […]

Children from the St. Brother André Elementary School’s Program for Gifted Learners have discovered something that NASA didn’t know, but probably should look into: EpiPens turn toxic in space. The students, aged 9-12, designed an experiment to send EpiPens to space, to test the effect of cosmic radiation on epinephrine, the hormone inside EpiPens used […]

Archaeologists have detailed the hidden corridor found deep within Khufu’s Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt by blasting it with cosmic ray muons. As explained in a new study, the researchers hope their work might shed light on the mystery of how this incredible structure was constructed. Unusual gaping voids within the pyramid were first […]

According to an estimate from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an organisation that represents the international music industry, people around the world spend on average 20.1 hours per week listening to music, up from 18.4 hours in 2021. We have more ways to access music than at any time in history and a […]

You’ve met the darkest bird ever discovered, now it’s time to meet the brightest – a brown woodcock has been discovered with white feathers that reflect 30 percent more light than any other bird known to mankind. The dazzling display is used to communicate in low light, allowing it to be seen in the darkest […]

What if the world had no nuclear bombs? It’s a fanciful dream and one that will likely never occur now that the technology is so widespread and so integral to many nations’ territorial defense strategy – but at one point in time, it was a possibility. There was one algorithm, one method of decoding a […]

Deep beneath Namibia, there lies a flooded cavern known as Dragon’s Breath Cave that’s home to the largest non-subglacial underground lake on planet Earth. The true size of this body of water was not known for decades as explorers could only dive so far, but recent technological advances have forced the cavern to give up […]

Have you ever looked at a clock suddenly and noticed that the second hand stood still for longer than you think it should have? Maybe a touch longer than a second? You have probably already experienced the “stopped clock illusion“, but if not, it’s as simple as not looking at a clock or stopwatch, and […]

Very smart people have found a way to outmaneuver the limits of ChatGPT and unleash its unfiltered, opinionated, and untethered alter-ego: DAN (do anything now). It’s so simple that anyone can access the jailbreak simply by copying and pasting a prewritten paragraph of text into the chatbot.  For the uninitiated, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence […]

A man has been arrested in Peru after a 600- to 800-year-old mummy was found inside his cooler bag. According to police, on Saturday three men were found drinking in a park in the city of Puno when the remains were found. The man, 26-year-old Julio Cesar Bermejo, told local media that the mummified remains […]

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) – otherwise referred to as the last Ice Age – was an exceptionally challenging time for the hunter-gatherer groups that inhabited the Eurasian landmass. To survive the intense cold, human populations had to seek refuge on the southern fringe of the continent, although as a new study reveals, not all […]

Weight loss fads like keto and paleo diets have become extremely popular over the last few decades, but a new study has news that advocates may find unpalatable. Researchers compared several popular diets for their overall nutritional quality and carbon footprint, finding that both keto and paleo diets provided the lowest nutritional quality and had […]

You may have seen a story recently about a woman who bought a batch of frozen fish to eat in London, only to discover a few days later that one of the fish was moving, appearing as if it was trying to breathe through its gills.  Cindy Lao’s partner Paul Lewis-Borman considered putting the fish […]

Flamingos have distinct personalities with birds that display bolder, more aggressive personality types more likely to form their own friendship groups with flamingos with similar attributes. More submissive flamingos are also more likely to be friends with other submissive flamingos a new study has found. By looking at two different flocks of flamingos in captivity […]

Last September, humanity conducted its first real test of planetary defense. And as the saying goes, a good offense is the best defense, so we “took the fight” directly to the asteroids. NASA’s DART mission impacted Dimorphos, the smaller companion of asteroid Didymos, changing its orbit. Immediate analysis showed it was a success, and follow-up […]

A rare fossil that’s preserved the body of a shark from the Jurassic has enabled scientists to try and work out if the species represents a missing link between sharks and rays, or a primitive ancestor of both groups. As it happens, neither theory was correct, as a look into its adaptations showed that it […]