Deborah Bloomfield

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so producing and storing electricity is all about clever transformations. Some seem more out there than others – like the idea to give new life to abandoned mine pits and turn them into giant batteries. The only thing they need is sand (or an equivalent heavy enough material). The […]

A curious phenomenon can be spotted on the glaciers of north America in the summer. That is, if you’re looking closely. In the late afternoon during the warmer months, these mysterious little black ice worms emerge from their frozen home, but nobody really knows why. The peculiar ice worms (Mesenchytraeus solifugus) are around 1 centimeter […]

We all have those snacks we can’t resist. And it seems that two particular supermassive black holes are the same way. Repeated flares have been spotted coming from the centers of two galaxies, where their supermassive black holes reside. These sudden brightenings were a type of tidal disruption event (TDE). A star got too close […]

The “killing claw” of the red-legged seriema has been found to be a weapon for pinning prey rather than slashing it. As well as demonstrating the fierceness of this leggy bird (made famous after one started a fight with a golf ball), it gives us a good idea of how its ancient ancestors like Velociraptor […]

The great Greek god of the seas, Poseidon, will be no doubt pleased to hear that archeologists have discovered a temple that once stood in his honor. Remarkably, the remains might even be those of an important shrine that was mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Strabo. Archeologists led by the Austrian Archaeological Institute say […]

Japanese macaques have been directly observed catching and eating fish from a flowing river. This is the first time that any monkey has ever been seen fishing, and researchers believe the behavior may have evolved in a specific group of macaques as a means of surviving the freezing winters of the Japanese Alps. “Japanese macaques, […]

ExxonMobil, one of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world, had a clear idea of how the burning of oil would impact Earth’s environment as far back as the 1970s, according to a new study. In fact, their predictions appear to have been more accurate than NASA’s scientists in the 1980s. It was first […]

A controversial museum exhibit containing the skeleton of Charles Byrne, an Irishman who at over 2.3 meters was known as the “Irish giant”, is to be taken down. The Hunterian Museum, at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London, has been closed for renovation since 2017, but the controversy around this particular exhibit […]

Evolution has sometimes dealt species a bit of a bum deal, and if the pitcher plant Nepenthes rajah could think you’d imagine it might feel this way having adapted to effectively be a porta-potty for small mammals.  These plants are even shaped a bit like toilets, made up of a liquid-filled pitcher with an accompanying […]

What do a little penguin, a baby rabbit, a black rat and a Krefft’s glider have in common? They’ve all been presented to me (when dead) by my animal companions. Chances are, if you live with a cat or dog, you’ve also been brought something similar. So, is it a gift, are they showing off, […]

A new study has delivered some harsh truths about what men and women consider “dealbreakers” in relationships, and it does not mince its words. The research looked at previous cohorts involved in other studies but from another angle, and concluded there are six main dealbreakers across both long-term and short-term relationships: “Gross”, “Addicted”, “Clingy”, “Promiscuous”, […]

The remnants of a biblical breakfast have been revealed in the Levant, where archaeologists have uncovered eight ostrich eggs near a fire pit used by desert nomads in ancient times. Dated to between 4,000 and 7,500 years ago, the giant ova were found during an excavation of the Nitzana sand dunes in Israel’s Negev Desert. […]

JWST has confirmed the existence of an exoplanet for the first time. The space telescope has provided the definitive measurements of LHS 475 b, confirming that it is indeed a planet, and was able to establish its size and a bit about its atmosphere. The planet is almost the size of our planet, with a […]

How will you look in 30 million years’ time? Probably not good, unless you happened to stumble into a vat of sap in your final moments, in which case you might just come out looking as fabulous as a flower whose pollen was recently tested after having spent over 33 million years preserved in amber. […]

Priapus was a Greek god with one stand-out feature: throughout his life, he was afflicted with a large and permanent erection. The story goes that he came to be endowed with the abnormality over a feud between his mother, Aphrodite, and Hera, the goddess of marriage and birth. Hera was burned following the Judgement Of […]

Genetic analysis has unveiled a previously unknown group of people who lived in Siberia during the last Ice Age around the borders of modern-day Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. It appears this mysterious group of people also had links to the multiple waves of humans who made the daring journey to North America.  By the […]

If anyone accuses you of “living in a bubble” there is an astronomically correct, if not always convincing, response: we all do. The Sun sits inside what is known as the Local Bubble, a space within the Milky Way galaxy some 1,000 light-years across in which interstellar material is scarce. It can be hard to […]

Elon Musk, formerly the world’s richest man, has set a new world record by losing the largest amount of personal fortune of any person in history. According to Guinness World Records, Musk has lost around $182 billion since November 2021. Other estimates put the losses – fueled largely by a fall in Tesla stock – […]

The importance of the UK’s first meteorite in 30 years, collected after being seen falling, has been confirmed with the discovery of amino acids – organic compounds essential for life on Earth. The concentration of amino acids and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is not as high as in some other asteroid remnants (just 1.1 and […]