Deborah Bloomfield

NASA’s Juno has completed its 51st perijove, the closest passage to Jupiter in its elongated orbit around the gas giant. But it did not just get up close and personal to the planet on May 16, it also flew by Io, getting as close as 35,500 kilometers (22,060 miles), and taking its closest pictures yet […]

Have you ever seen Ocean’s Eleven? Spoiler alert if you haven’t: in it, we see a ragtag group of lovable crooks and shysters attempt to take down a Las Vegas casino – essentially an impenetrable fortress of anti-thievery measures which, we are repeatedly informed throughout, just about nobody has ever successfully cracked. At almost every […]

Known to the scientific community for its promising properties against everything from cancer to infections, Triphyophyllum peltatum is an important plant. However, scientists have just discovered something seriously strange about it – sometimes, under the right conditions, this plant gets a taste for meat.  New findings suggest that while Triphyophyllum peltatum is usually content with […]

“How many Tyrannosaurus rex were there?” It’s a question that’s been answered before, but a study published last month offers up a new figure, challenging previous assumptions. From the dawn of the dinosaurs until their extinction, 1.7 billion of the thin-lipped, intimidatingly clever, and surprisingly slow theropods roamed the Earth, according to the new and improved calculations. Advertisement […]

Have you ever wondered what the heaviest object in the universe is? Unfortunately, it’s not a question that is really possible to settle, but we can give you an answer, or answers, to a very similar one: what is the most massive object known? The reason we’ve shifted from seeking the heaviest object to the […]

Fresh evidence suggests that early humans in Europe were mastering fire around 245,000 years ago. If this latest assessment is on point, it indicates our distant relatives may have been sat around a campfire, perhaps sharing food and building social bonds, up to 50,000 years earlier than previously thought.   In a new study, researchers […]

A study of the orbit of known space objects has found that the Earth is safe from impact events for at least around 1,000 years. NASA and other observatories track the orbits of objects discovered in the Solar System, keeping a particular eye on “near Earth objects” (NEOs) 140 meters (460 feet) and larger in […]

Scientists used sound waves to estimate the composition of the Earth’s upper mantle and found evidence that around a quadrillion tons of diamonds may be buried somewhere over 160 kilometers (100 miles) deep beneath our feet. The research, based on decades of seismic activity data, was reported in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems back in […]

A team of amateur sleuths that previously claimed to have identified the infamous Zodiac Killer has now made further allegations that the FBI “secretly listed” the suspect since 2016. If true, it would suggest that law enforcement missed a chance to arrest the man, who has been dead since 2018.  Case Breakers, a non-profit run […]

There are roughly 32,000 known asteroids that get close to our planet – an impressive number of objects, which has tripled in the last 10 years thanks to wider efforts in planetary defense. Almost half of all those detections (14,400) came from the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, a project developed at the University of Arizona. […]

The Gulf Stream, part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and often described as one of the planet’s major climate tipping points, has been slowing down for some time now.  One paper attempted to discern the flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) over the centuries by looking at sediment, temperature data, and […]

In case you were worried that the current iteration of generative AIs are too nice and empathetic, scientists have got you covered – a new language model has been trained on the worst part of the internet, the Dark Web.  Given perhaps the funniest name yet, DarkBERT (yes, that’s actually its name) is a generative […]

Humans have been French kissing since long before the language of amour was invented, which means we may have been spreading diseases by snogging throughout our history. Highlighting the ancient roots of kissing in a new article, researchers say the first documented smooch can be traced back to 4,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, although it’s […]

The largest underwater scanning project in history has been used to create the first-ever digital replica of the Titanic, offering a glimpse of one of the world’s most famous shipwrecks with unbelievable clarity. The new scan captures the sunken remains of the Titanic in its entirety, revealing a complete three-dimensional view of the shipwreck caked […]

Spinosaurid bones found in Castellón, Spain, represent a new genus, palaeontologists have concluded. The dinosaur in question is estimated to have grown to a fearsome 10-11 meters (33-36 feet) long. Following the recent discovery of the moderately sized Vallibonavenatrix cani nearby, the identification indicates the Iberian Peninsula was a center for spinosaurid diversity in the […]

A new study has concluded that Bernie Madoff, the New York financier responsible for defrauding thousands of investors out of some $65 billion in the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, was almost certainly a psychopath – finding that the late banker and con artist had a near-100 percent hit rate on established checklists of psychopathic traits. […]

A shark has attacked and probably killed an Australian surfer in a rare but deadly encounter. The victim, eyewitnesses claim, was attacked multiple times before disappearing under the waves, which is extremely unusual behavior. The victim, 46-year-old Simon Baccanello, was surfing on a popular beach at Walkers Rocks, part of the Lake Newland Conservation Park […]

Traces of human DNA are not the only thing left behind after sexual intercourse. A new study has found that bacterial DNA is also transferred between males and females during penetrative vaginal sex, and that these microbial signatures could be invaluable to forensic scientists working to catch sex criminals. PhD student Ruby Dixon, working with […]

A new study using satellite data has found that New York City is sinking at a relatively fast rate, with some urban areas sinking much faster than others. According to the team, one contributing factor is the sheer weight of the city’s high-rise buildings. The team, led by US Geological Survey research geophysicist Tom Parsons, […]

Back in 2020, “Adventurous Lisa” and 10 other Tasmanian devils were reintroduced to mainland Australia having gone extinct in the region around 3,000 years ago. Now Lisa has given birth to three joeys adding to the growing populations of these little marsupials. The 11 individuals were released by Aussie Ark with partners Re:wild, WildArk, and […]