Deborah Bloomfield

Viking-inspired tattoos with Norse imagery and runes have become somewhat in vogue in the era of Pinterest-inspired body art, but did the Vikings actually have tattoos? There’s no solid archaeological evidence that tattoos were common in the Viking age since it’s rare for skin to remain intact for centuries. Nevertheless, we know from written sources […]

A physicist in the UK has proposed a new method of disembodied transport in quantum computers. Instead of relying on a system of quantum teleportation, where a particle is destroyed in one place and then recreated elsewhere following an exchange of information, the new system – called counterportation – claims that it doesn’t need even […]

In the 19th century, a rumor circulated in the scientific world that a “lost continent” was laying undiscovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. They named it Lemuria as their misguided efforts were driven by some very confusing lemurs.  The idea is largely credited to British zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater who wrote a paper […]

Three hikers were recently caught in a flash flood while hiking the Buckskin Gulch slot canyon in southern Utah. The men in their 50s were experienced hikers, but the severity of the conditions meant that only one was found alive after they were reported missing. Buckskin Gulch in Utah is the longest and deepest slot […]

In 2000, a hiker was walking near the Fukang Mountains, China, when they stumbled on something spectacular. What is now known as the Fukang meteorite is an incredible stoney-iron meteorite rock packed with honeycomb-like crystals. It is now the most famous meteorite in the world, but what makes it special?  Pallasite meteorites  The Fukang meteorite […]

In everyday conversation, and even on our site, we treat the terms mass and weight like synonyms. But scientifically, the two are related but very separate. The mass of an object is an intrinsic property of the said object. It is the amount of matter in it. Your mass doesn’t change if you are standing […]

It must be frustrating, sometimes, to be a professional archaeologist. Here you are, slogging away on years-long excavations in the scorching desert or freezing English rain, just hoping to find a tiny clue about ancient burial rites or something – only for some rando to wander up a mountain one day and accidentally stumble upon […]

An archaeological excavation in Germany has uncovered the first evidence of a Roman defensive technology described by Julius Caesar. The find was made at a site near the town of Bad Ems, where teams also found evidence of two military camps, challenging what we thought we knew about the history of this region. Bad Ems, […]

The world really needs to be more careful and stop misplacing its nuclear materials.   According to the United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog, 2.5 tons of natural uranium has gone missing from Libya, sounding the alarm over potential nefarious uses of the dangerous material. It went missing from a site not under government control, and forces […]

The Sun is heading towards the peak of activity in the current cycle, the solar maximum, which means more potentially concerning space weather events but also more stunning features forming on the surface of the Sun. The latest one, a towering Polar Crown Prominence (PCP), has been captured in exquisite detail by an astrophotographer in […]

Imagine you’re on England’s eastern coast sometime in the ninth century CE and you see hordes of men and women charging your village, axes and shields in hand, and they all look a bit mean. However, while our imaginations have been saturated with such images through popular shows like the History Channel’s Vikings or video games […]

For the Vikings, it’s Ragnarök. For the Aztecs, it comes with a blackened sun and the slaying of Huitzilopochtli; for Zoroastrians, it’s called Frashokereti and involves a great war and molten metal coursing across the Earth. Christians have a whole bunch of ideas, but it’s generally accepted to involve things like destruction and devastation, dried-up […]

It’s pretty common to hear enthusiastic pet owners referring to their four-legged friends as “fur babies” – a moniker that can sometimes prompt scoffs from people living with the more traditional human type of infant. Sure, you love your doggo or your kitty, worn-out parents might say, but you simply can’t call them your “baby” […]

New research is shedding light on the tumultuous processes that give rise to diamonds, by homing in on a distinct purple companion found alongside them. Diamonds are highly prized for their qualities but also for their rarity. One way to look for them is to search for associated minerals that occur more commonly, such as […]

Something very strange went down in Dunmore Cave. Located in a quiet patch of Ireland, it’s said this cavern is filled with hundreds of human bones, along with dozens of silver and bronze items. Its story is still not fully explained, but some suspect that this was the sight of a Viking massacre over a […]

Even if you don’t recognize this odd-looking contraption, chances are you will have heard the sound it makes. That’s right, this is a musical instrument, invented by none other than Benjamin Franklin, and inspired by something you’ve almost definitely tried after a couple of sherries at Christmas. One of the seven Founding Fathers of the […]

In 2017, a hitherto little-known actress named Kelly Marie Tran made history. As the character of maintenance worker Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Vietnamese-American actress had become the first ever Asian-American woman to have a major role in a Star Wars film. But with all the excitement came something much worse: […]

Remember 2012? That was the year that Lonesome George died, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars, and Felix Baumgartner skydived from the edge of space. It was also the year of the biggest anti-climax in history as the world failed to end on December 21 – the date that, according to some, the Maya had […]

If you take a look at search engine analytics, you’ll see that thousands of people each year are asking Google what allspice actually is and what it’s made of. To the surprise of many, it’s not actually a blend of numerous different aromatics and spices, but the ground-up berries of a tree found in tropical […]

Did you know that the yeast used to make beer and bread is capable of sexual reproduction? That’s right – these single-celled fungi can get it on in a process called “shmooing”. The term originates from the fact that, when they’re getting down to it, yeast cells resemble a shmoo: a blobby, rotund character created […]