Deborah Bloomfield

Deep in the Canadian Arctic, you can find a 51-square-kilometer (20-square-mile) pileup of fallen trees and ancient wood. Scientists have recently mapped this woody pile-up – the largest “logjam” in the world – and believe it’s likely to be having a massively underappreciated impact on the planet’s carbon cycle. The pile-up is located in the […]

Some of the oldest windmills in the world are found in Nashtifan, on the windswept plains of northeastern Iraq. These vertical-axis windmills are thought to have been built over 1,000 years ago. They still work today and could be used to mill grain into flour.  Advertisement Credit: Great Big Story Deborah BloomfieldSource Link: The Ancient […]

Despite the fact that the largest silver nugget ever found weighed around the same as an adult bison it is thought that all the silver in the world would be able to fit into a 55 by 55 meter (180 by 180 foot) cube. Just FYI, this cube is bigger than the gold one, which […]

Scientists have found a strange warm liquid spewing out from the seabed “like a firehose” near Oregon, which they suspect could provide some hints about earthquake activity in the Pacific Northwest. Researchers led by the University of Washington named the first-of-its-kind discovery Pythia’s Oasis. Located around 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of Newport, […]

When a result has been around for as long as the one we now know as the Pythagorean Theorem – it’s maybe 4,000 years old at least, at last count – you might expect there wouldn’t be much new to say about it. But as two high school students from New Orleans may now have […]

The 2022 underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) volcano released energy equivalent to 20 megatons of TNT in five explosions, the largest of which was 15 megatons. That puts it well behind Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever tested, but far ahead of America’s largest nuclear bomb, the 1.2-megaton B83. It also […]

Around 5,500 children with rare genetic diseases can put a name to their condition for the first time, thanks to a decade-long study. Sixty of the diseases diagnosed are brand new to science, and three-quarters of the genetic mutations identified were not inherited from the children’s parents. Understanding the genetic causes of their conditions means […]

This beautifully blue speck of zircon crystal is dated to around 4.4 billion years old, making it the earliest confirmed piece of the planet’s crust and providing some clues about how life on Earth came to be. The ancient crystal was found in the sticks of Western Australia at a remote rock outcrop called Jack […]

Get ready icy moons of Jupiter, Europe is coming for you. Today the first-ever European mission to Jupiter, JUICE, successfully launched from French Guiana, and is now on its peculiar flight towards the Jovian system. It will reach the gas giant in July 2031 and once there will provide new insights into its three large […]

In 1900, three lighthouse keepers posted on a remote Scottish island in the Outer Hebrides went missing and were never seen again. The account of the crew of the Flannan Isle Lighthouse has become a popular story that evokes all the tropes of a gothic mystery, and has generated a plethora of explanations ranging from […]

In an unexpected and unintentional ode to Aquaman, a rather unusual biomaterial has been trialed in Brazil, where it’s been used to great success in the treatment of burns. If something seems fishy to you, that’s probably because it is: the secret ingredient in all this is tilapia, the freshwater fish native to Africa but […]

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), sometimes called China’s “artificial sun”, has broken the world record for the longest confined plasma reaction, according to reports. The researchers claim to have maintained an ultra-hot plasma for 403 seconds, breaking their previous record of 101 seconds in 2017, and hope the milestone is another step towards the […]

Childhood in Ancient Egypt was something of a mixed bag, with some kids enjoying the luxury of becoming Pharaoh before turning ten while others struggled with iron deficiency and poorly oxygenated blood. According to a new analysis of child mummies, anemia was a common problem for the Egyptian youth, leading to high rates of skeletal […]

Since humans (and our ancestors) began traversing the waves thousands of years ago, we’ve been mapping islands and landmasses along the way. But many of the islands discovered centuries ago seem to have disappeared from the oceans without a trace. Termed “phantom islands”, these landmasses may have vanished for a number of reasons, or never […]

James Cameron, acclaimed director of the film Titanic, explorer of the actual Titanic, creator of The Terminator and countless other classic movies, and finder of Jesus Christ’s bones??? In 2007, Cameron launched a documentary he had produced with Canadian documentary maker Simcha Jacobovici, which aired on the Discovery Channel. In it, the filmmakers claim that […]

The potential and possible downsides of artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI) have been discussed a lot lately, largely due to advances in large language models such as Open AI’s Chat GPT.  Some in the industry have even called for AI research to be paused or even shut down immediately, citing the possible […]

The oldest therizinosaur fossils found to date have been identified in Britain using machine learning models to analyze mystery teeth. The toothy remains were found in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Dorset, and are the first time therizinosaurs have been identified from fossils found in the UK. The findings follow an analysis of individual teeth using machine […]

Researchers at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, have developed a model to detect the levels of stress someone is experiencing at work based on how they type and move their mouse. The results may help prevent chronic stress before it becomes too serious. In Switzerland, a third of workers experience workplace stress. In the US the figure […]

A massive new analysis of tumor growth has highlighted just how adept they are at evolving to new challenges, suggesting that a universal treatment may be significantly harder than once thought. Spanning seven different studies across nine years, the analysis found that lung cancers have an “almost infinite” ability to evolve, shocking the researchers and […]

Pugs, boxers and chow chows may be all the rage these days, but a new discovery proves that the popularity of flat-faced dogs is far from a modern trend. Analyzing the remains of a canine skull at a Roman-era site in Türkiye, researchers have determined that the ancient pooch had a brachycephalic skull similar to […]