Deborah Bloomfield

In 1822, French philologist Jean-François Champollion made an announcement that would change our understanding of the ancient world. Champollion had successfully deciphered the enigmatic Rosetta Stone and provided the key to understanding ancient Egyptian text. Now 200 years have passed, and our knowledge of ancient Egypt has grown significantly, but there are still many intriguing […]

On Earth, aurorae, also known as the northern and southern lights, are produced by the interaction of charged particles from the Sun with our planet’s atmosphere. They follow the magnetic field of our planet and end up hitting oxygen and nitrogen in the air creating the spectacular colors we see. There is auroral activity in […]

Dinosaurs are often painted as predators, chasing down everything from smaller dinosaurs to Jeff Goldblum, but we often overlook their role as prey. Many dinosaurs were dinner for bigger dinosaurs, but as a fascinating new fossil reveals, some were lunch for early mammals, too. The unusual and rare fossil is 125 million years old and […]

Hairworms are noodle-like parasites in the phylum Nematomorpha that are able to manipulate the actions of their hosts. Now, a new paper has presented the first genomes for these worms, revealing that they’re even weirder than we thought. “Nothing like them has ever been sequenced before at that level,” said lead author Tauana Cunha, a […]

Ok, the last few years haven’t been the best. Whether it’s COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns, or the war taking place in Europe, or any of the resulting economic problems raging across the world, it’s fair to say that the 2020s so far haven’t been as roaring as we were hoping for. But is there […]

The story of how Oklahoma’s borders ended up looking like a cooking pot with a handle is one steeped in the state’s unique history and the legacy of slavery. Take a look at a map of the US and you’ll see the shape of Oklahoma is relatively rectangular-shaped except for a 106-kilometer (66-mile) strip of […]

As extreme heat brought on by an anticyclone in southern Europe sees temperatures reach upwards of 40°C (104°F) in places, the life-threatening conditions have been unofficially dubbed “Cerberus” after the underworld’s three-headed watchdog.  In Greek mythology, Cerberus is described as a three- (or sometimes 50-) headed dog with a serpent’s tail who stands guard at […]

Your chances of getting hit by a meteorite and incredibly slim, but never zero. Just ask Ann Hodges (figuratively speaking, she died in 1972) who became the first documented case of someone being hit by a meteorite in 1954 and survived. A fresh meteorite strike story is currently doing the rounds about a woman in […]

Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) are known for their bioluminescent glow, which is thought to be used to camouflage them as they attack from the direction of the Sun. Unlike fireflies or jellyfish, however, the squid do not produce the light themselves, instead having outsourced luminescence to bacteria that make a home in a specialized light […]

Here’s an odd fact to get your head around: the wreck of the Titanic was first found by people who were only pretending to look for the wreck of the Titanic. This isn’t a situation where they were meant to be looking for the Titanic, but did a lot of goofing off and pretending that […]

Courtship, mating behaviors, and parental care of offspring are some of the most energetically draining moments in the life of any animal species but the cost is usually outweighed by the fitness benefit. It, therefore, seems counterproductive that some species that provide parental care to their offspring sometimes cannibalize their young. In the eastern hellbender salamander, […]

With summer storm season continuing to bubble up in the planet’s northern hemisphere, you might be unfortunate enough to come across a derecho.  A derecho – which means “straight ahead” in Spanish – is loosely defined as a widespread, long-lived wind storm that has a strip of rapidly moving thunderstorms that can prove devastating for […]

On July 17, the Earth may have witnessed the hottest midnight ever recorded, at a stifling 48.9°C (120°F). The potential new record was set in Death Valley, California, which is notorious for record-breaking temperatures. This latest milestone was reached between the hours of 12 and 1 am, per recordings from Badwater basin weather station. While the readings […]

One character that’s hard to miss in the trailer for the upcoming movie Oppenheimer is Albert Einstein, the wild-haired, paradigm-shifting theoretical physicist who needs no introduction. Rest assured, Einstein’s cameo in the movie is not just fanciful Hollywood storytelling (such as Archimedes’ unlikely appearance in the latest installment of Indiana Jones).  While Oppenheimer and Einstein never […]

Here’s a weird question: does your phone weigh more when it’s “full” than when it’s “empty”? It sounds almost ridiculously naïve – of course, a phone isn’t like a jug of water, with each photo or contact adding an extra few milliliters to the total. How could information have weight? But like many apparently simple questions, this […]

Though many people associate hypnotism with second-rate magicians, the practice is in fact supported by a large number of clinicians and neuroscientists who see it as a powerful tool to hack the minds of patients suffering from psychological and psychosomatic disorders. Yet in order to get the best results out of this strange yet apparently effective […]

Giant centipedes can be found in several habitats across the globe, but none are as impressive as Scolopendra gigantea, also known as the Amazonian giant. It’s the largest centipede species in the world, stretching to over 30 centimeters (12 inches) in length, and has an appetite to match. Armed with a powerful venom, these giant […]

It’s easy to like someone simply because they’re into the same music as you are, or to hate a person because of their views on the shape of the Earth. According to new research, there’s a simple psychological mechanism behind this tendency to judge a person based on a single characteristic, highlighting how the rules […]

If you’re familiar with the work of Charles Dickens, in particular his 1853 novel Bleak House, you may also be aware of a strange phenomenon termed “spontaneous human combustion”. In arguably the most famous literary case of this curiosity, Dickens details the grisly demise of junk merchant Mr Krook, who meets a fiery end, leaving […]

TikTok has found a new flirting technique to pine over, the so-called “Triangle Method”. Videos about the technique have wrapped up millions of views so far and many commenters appear to be happy with the results. While you’ll be hard-pushed to find any clinical trials investigating the effectiveness of the method, there are a handful […]