Deborah Bloomfield

Over the last eight years, the world’s three gravitational wave observatories have delivered on their potential, detecting some of the most extreme events in the universe: black hole mergers and neutron star collisions. Now after three years of downtime for upgrades and improvements, they are about to turn on again. The goal now is to […]

The spiny mouse is one of nature’s great oddities and it just got even weirder, as researchers discovered that it has a peculiar adaptation on its tail that’s more commonly associated with reptiles. The skin of its tail is covered in bony armored plates known as osteoderms, and until now it was thought that the […]

The Tempest Prognosticator would likely pull great ratings for weather reporters. Like a haunted carousel housing leeches in glass bottles, its inventor George Merryweather (don’t you just love nominative determinism?) believed it could warn of great storms. In truth, the leech barometer hasn’t been found to be all that reliable, but it sure is cooler […]

Marie Curie is remembered today for her pioneering work on radioactivity, which not only earned her two Nobel Prizes but also the recognition as the “mother of modern physics”. But while her research into the radioactive elements polonium and radium may have secured her a lasting scientific legacy, those same substances have also had a […]

Jo Cameron is a woman who doesn’t feel pain but is also spared the usual consequences, thanks to rare mutations. She also experiences less anxiety or fear than other people. A study of the molecular basis of her condition could yield medical benefits for the rest of us. Not feeling pain may sound wonderful, but a […]

A team of researchers has used artificial intelligence (AI) to reconstruct videos by using continuous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data of participants’ brains.  Publishing their findings, which are yet to be peer-reviewed, on pre-print server arXiv, the researchers used data taken from volunteers who had watched videos of varied inputs – including animals, humans, […]

A new report into the scale of biodiversity loss across the planet has revealed that almost half of the animal species on Earth are currently in decline. According to the researchers, this shocking depletion of populations is largely due to the degradation of habitats by human activity, all of which points towards an “Anthropocene extinction […]

Giant clams, as their name suggests, are pretty big. The mollusks sit on the ocean, can reach up to 1.2 meters (4 feet) in length, and weigh over 226 kilograms (500 pounds). Some species can live for over a century in the wild, and make giant pearls while they’re at it. It’s really no wonder […]

In May 1969, Apollo 10 staged a dress rehearsal for the first human landing on the lunar surface. The mission was a success, with the crew of three orbiting the Moon for over 10 hours, and separating and then rejoining a lunar landing module. While they were up there, alone on the far side of […]

New research has found a method that can determine the sex of a chicken in early development by “sniffing” the scent emitted through the shell. If the technology is successfully scaled up, it has the potential to avoid the culling of millions of live chicks. Over 350 million male chicks are culled each year in […]

In an entirely predictable but damning vision of the internet’s future, a fake photograph of the Pentagon on fire has prompted a brief dip in the stock market, showing just how important it is to get the AI-fueled misinformation crisis under control.   Shared by a “verified” account (they paid $8 for a blue tick, […]

Farting is an odorous fact of life: humans do it, dogs definitely do it, lacewings do it with such aplomb they can take out six termites with a single toot. But do all animals release offensive gas in this way? It got us wondering… do cats fart? The short answer is yes, cats do fart. […]

The Lost Colony of Roanoke remains an enduring mystery in the minds of many Americans, and it is easy to see why. An entire community of settlers allegedly disappeared, leaving confusing and tantalizing clues as to what may have happened to them. One such example is the so-called Dare Stone which was once thought to […]

Axiom Space has launched its second space mission to the International Space Station (ISS). This is the third private mission to the ISS and includes among others Rayyanah Barnawi, a biomedical researcher and also the Saudi Space Commission’s first female astronaut. And now she’s is also the 600th person to orbit the Earth. Axiom-2 sees […]

You might not know it, but your pinky might contain a feature that’s extremely rare and little understood. It’s called an extra interphalangeal transverse, and it simply consists of a third crease on the little finger.  Also known as a supernumerary digital flexion crease, it’s typically found below the crease that’s created by the main […]

In Roman mythology, Jupiter was the god of lightning, as well as the sky and dubious sexual encounters in non-human form. It’s therefore highly appropriate that the planet named after him has been revealed to have a lot of lightning too. Decades after the existence of lightning on Jupiter was revealed by Voyager 1, we […]

Scrotums, let’s face it, are not the most attractive of the sexual organs. As the authors of a recent study describe it, it is “a sac-like structure containing the testicles” which “semifloat” around in there. The scrotum is outside of the body as the temperature inside is too high for sperm cells to be produced. […]

While whiling away the hours reading angry comments from strangers on the Internet, you may have come across the term “Luddite”. Usually thrown at people expressing even the slightest desire to pump the brakes on artificial intelligence (AI) before it takes all our jobs, the term is used to imply they are technophobes opposed to […]

It’s a ritual millions of us count on to get us through the day: we wake up, stumble into the kitchen, and pour ourselves a steaming hot mug of our favorite poop-inducer. But according to various urban legends, there’s more to your morning cup of joe than just the coffee beans and water you were […]

Prehistoric Planet has kicked off for a week of watch parties after an exhilarating first episode took viewers rafting among the island habitats of Earth 66 million years ago. While the tiny castaway Zalmoxes kicked off proceedings, the episode was arguably stolen by some of the series’ non-dinosaur stars, and there’s plenty more where that […]