Deborah Bloomfield

After a month of trying, the radar antenna on the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is finally unfolded and operable. The Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna failed to deploy after launch, which flight controllers blamed on an errant pin. The problem has now been solved, leaving all 10 of JUICE’s instruments in working […]

This week, a new analysis claims mass produced lab-grown meat could release up to 25 times more emissions than the global beef industry, a draft of the first-ever human pangenome aims to incorporate the full diversity of humanity, and we dive into the world of Dungeons and Dragons to see how it can benefit our […]

Archaeologists in Mexico are urging people who find megafauna fossils not to share their discoveries online after a collection of mammoth remains was looted before researchers had a chance to study them. According to a recent report, ancient fossils are often damaged or destroyed by careless plunderers, some of whom are so blasé about the […]

A YouTuber accused of deliberately crashing his plane in a bid to go viral has pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal investigation. Trevor Jacob faces up to 20 years behind bars after admitting he purposely crashed a small plane in California and attempted to hide the evidence, according to the US Department of Justice.  On […]

Hidden inside a secure vault in Australia, there is a letter written by the late Queen Elizabeth II that cannot be opened for another 62 years. The letter is addressed to the Mayor of Sydney, specifically, and has instructions that it can only be opened in 2085 and not a moment sooner. The contents of […]

If movies are to be believed, sex is something to be enjoyed only between two extremely attractive people, both of whom are under the age of about 35. Sorry, grandma, the message seems to be – gettin’ lucky is a young gal’s game. In reality, nearly seven out of every eight men and three in […]

The animal kingdom is full of all kinds of predator-prey relationships, from head-popping hunting techniques to carefully evolved camouflage. Avoiding predators is a tricky job for many of the world’s animal species. Playing dead might be thought of as a fun trick to teach your pet but researchers in Australia have discovered that whole colonies […]

Palaeontologists from the University of Portsmouth have discovered the fossil of a new species of prehistoric marine reptile that could have been twice the size of a killer whale. The new findings suggest these animals could be much larger than previously thought, adding to a debate that has divided experts for some time.  The remains […]

Would you care to bathe in the blood-red pools of Japan’s Beppu city? At around 78°C (172.4°F), we wouldn’t recommend it. Beppu’s famous cluster of natural hot springs bubble away in an array of curious hues and temperatures, but perhaps the most arresting and dangerous is Chinoike Jigoku, whose name translates to “blood hell pond”. […]

Saturn’s rings are so quintessential to how we visualize the planet that it seems almost wrong to picture the gas giant without them. But it seems likely that the planet was not born with them. Astronomers have presented the most solid evidence yet that the rings are not ancient at all. They formed no more […]

The stratosphere is the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere, extending up to 50 kilometers (30 miles). It is relatively calm – but through it, it is possible to hear faint sounds coming from the troposphere, the part we inhabit. But not all the sounds detected have a clear origin. Scientists have used microbarometers, attached to […]

May 14, 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, a crucial mission in NASA’s crewed space exploration of space. Skylab was the first American space station, an orbiting workshop, and over the six months it was occupied, it vastly expanded humanity’s understanding of space exploration, from the effects of space on the […]

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story recently began streaming on Netflix and tells a fictional tale based on a real person who some believe may have been the first Black Queen of England. There is much debate around the queen’s ancestry, with some theories stating she was a direct descendent of a Black branch of the […]

Make your way through the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave in Belize and you might be lucky enough to meet the Crystal Maiden. This ancient Maya archaeological site is the home of a number of skeletons, including one that has been caked in calcite, giving the effect it’s bejeweled in glistening crystals. The remains are known […]

On June 4, 1629, the Dutch East India Company’s flagship Batavia was lost off the coast of Western Australia. What unfolded was a tragic tale of mutiny and murder that has captured the imaginations of historians and archaeologists. Now, the findings of a five-year project have shed new light on what became of the Batavia and […]

Have you ever left the house on a warm summer’s day or a particularly cold dry winter afternoon and thought you can smell rain? Apparently, not everyone is able to nasally detect approaching bad weather – so is there any science to back it up, or is it just another myth? The claim that it […]

The Wallace Line has shaped species diversity across Asia and Australia but, the thing is, it doesn’t actually exist. It’s completely imaginary, and yet its influence on species evolution is very much real. Animals – and plants too, although less obviously – look very different on either side of the line, which might make sense […]

One of the most famous and important surviving artifacts from the Aztec Empire reveals how they expected the apocalypse to go down – but also the rather sneaky way they figured out to avoid it. If there’s only one thing you know about classical Mesoamerican apocalypse myths, it’s probably this: that the world ended in […]