Deborah Bloomfield

Pepper the pet cat has had his paws in the discovery of two viruses. After helping to find the first jeilongvirus in the US last year, he’s just doubled down and contributed to the identification of a new strain of orthoreovirus. Granted, Pepper isn’t breaking a sweat over a lab workbench, carefully processing samples and […]

There are a lot of worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune. Some are dwarf planets, while many others are much smaller rocks floating in the colder edges of our Solar System. But they do not orbit randomly. In particular, several bodies are in a complex dance with Neptune, including Pluto – but none quite like […]

How did supermassive black holes come to be? Astronomers have two hypotheses for their formation, and now one of them might have gotten the first tantalizing piece of direct evidence. Researchers report the observation of a supermassive black hole that might have formed by direct collapse. The work reported is a curious beast, part of […]

In 2006, NASA launched New Horizons on a long journey to study dwarf planet Pluto over 5 billion kilometers (3.1 billion miles) from Earth.  The spacecraft first headed to gas giant Jupiter for a gravity assist in 2007, in a maneuver which would increase its velocity by around 14,000 kilometers per hour (9,000 miles per […]

Influenza vaccine programs help to considerably lower the burden of disease, even when not everyone takes up the offer of a shot. A new study has confirmed this but also provides us with a stark warning: if we allow transmission to get too high, even the best flu vaccines can’t completely stop the disease in […]

Are we the last generation to witness the twinkling beauty of fireflies during the warm summer evenings? That’s a claim that has been circulating on social media for a while, but is it true? In short, not quite. Of course, our planet is currently caught in a bad situation. We can understand this as what […]

Have you been feeling a little low in energy lately? Are you looking for a quick (ish) fix? Attempt to find a solution on the internet, and you may well be told to try a vitamin B12 supplement – but is that actually going to work? Or will it end up being a waste of […]

Ever since JAWS hit screens 50 years ago, sharks have ranked pretty high on humanity’s nemesis list. If the eye-catching graphics of Shark Week or Sharknado are to be believed, the seas are simply swarming with toothy predators just desperate to get a taste of that sweet human meat.  But is that picture really true? […]

The oldest known bone spear tip in Europe has been identified in a cave in southwest Russia. Dated to between 70,000 and 80,000 years ago, the ancient artifact was crafted tens of millennia before modern humans arrived in the region, and was likely fashioned by Neanderthals as a hunting weapon. Such a find is remarkable […]

In 2016, a lightning storm rolled across the Hardangervidda plateau in Norway. When the skies cleared, wildlife officials stumbled upon a haunting scene: the bodies of 323 wild reindeer all huddled together. It seemed like a grim mystery, but the massive thunderstorm that afternoon led the Norwegian Environment Agency to suspect the mass death was […]

If you want proof that Mother Nature has a sense of humor, look no further than the squirting cucumber. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like; yes, it’s as funny as you’re imagining; and yes, thanks to new research out of Kiel University in Germany, you can now witness it for yourself. “We recorded the […]

A new digital reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman’s ribcage shows a number of “ambiguous” features that might have assisted him on his seasonal migration to the frosty Alpine peaks. By comparing the mummy’s thorax to those of several other ancient humans, the authors of a new study dispel a long-standing assumption that Homo sapiens trunks […]

Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system and the only other body with rivers, lakes, and seas. They are not made of water. With a temperature of -179°C (-290°F), these are not made of water but of liquid methane and ethane, as well as hydrocarbons. This is truly an alien environment; still, the […]

A female blanket octopus has to be up there as one of the most spectacular sea creatures to see alive in the wild. Growing to the length of an adult human, they trail an iridescent rainbow skirt as they glide through the water. They are big, they are bright, they are beautiful, but a blanket […]

An animation using data from the European Space Agency (ESA) allows you to “listen” to Earth’s magnetic field being disrupted during the Brunhes-Matuyama Reversal 780,000 years in the past. Though you might think that compasses will always point towards the geographic north pole, the magnetic and geographic poles do not always align. As well as […]

Radio astronomers have detected radio pulses from a source that appears to send a signal in our direction every 14 minutes, although we’ve only captured a tiny fraction of those since it was found. While several radio sources have been found on similar cycles in recent years, this one stands out for the extreme polarization […]

Across July 14-15, 1965 (depending on your time zone), the Mariner 4 mission was doing something incredible. This early NASA mission performed the first flyby of Mars and took the first close-up photograph of another planet. Space exploration was changed for good 60 years ago. If we consider Mars alone, there are now multiple missions […]

For centuries, people have noticed strange, fleeting flashes of light on the Moon. Long pushed aside as optical illusions or observational errors, these eerie bursts eventually captured the attention of the scientific community. While observations of odd light blips on the Moon have been reported since the 17th century with the rise of telescopes, unconfirmed […]

When an asteroid made Meteor Crater in northern Arizona, it did more than leave the Earth’s best preserved impact crater. According to new research, the earthquake that the collision caused induced a landslide, which caused water to back up to the height of a 20-storey building above the current river. Meteor Crater, also known as […]

Heads up for the “Blood Moon” eclipse. In just a few months, most of the world will have the chance to witness a total lunar eclipse. 2025 will experience its second total lunar eclipse on the nights of September 7 and 8, following the first one that took place in March. A total lunar eclipse […]