Deborah Bloomfield

Scary Barbie is so hot right now. In a matter of weeks, two papers by two independent groups have been published defining AT2021lwx, also known as ZTF20abrbeie. Probably more famous for its nickname “Scary Barbie”, it’s the largest cosmic explosion ever detected.  A study published last week suggested it was a star being ripped apart […]

Scientists at Washington State University have made history at the grill this month, by cooking up the first sausages in the US to be made with meat from gene-edited pigs. Once upon a time, chowing down on the charred corpse of some deer or mammoth you recently brought down on a hunting trip with your […]

If you want to get a sensational measurement you either go big or go home. And this story really went big. It involves a unique supernova, a galaxy cluster so massive it warps space-time, and the most important problem currently going on in cosmology. A fantastic set of ingredients for some exciting research. Refsdal Supernova […]

When people think back to the time of the dinosaurs, most people picture a giant Tyrannosaurus rex or a majestic sauropod roaming through our prehistoric planet. Mammals on the other hand, though around at the time of the dinosaurs, remained small and rarely weighed over 10 kilograms (22 pounds). However, 20 million years after the […]

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extremely powerful but incredibly brief flashes of radio waves coming from distant galaxies and lasting just milliseconds. As a general class, they are very puzzling to astronomers. Some repeat, others do not. Some seem to be from a clear type of source, others could be explained by many different events. […]

Neuroscience owes much to the brains of the gruesomely injured, whose crushed cortices have enabled doctors to study the workings of the mind under conditions that could never be ethically recreated in laboratory experiments. One such case is that of Patient M, who began experiencing the world back-to-front after being shot in the head during […]

What’s the lamest excuse you’ve ever used to get off work? Go on, we won’t tell anyone – or, say, commit it to stone in a way that’s readable thousands of years from now. Unfortunately for a group of Ancient Egyptians, such evidence of their slack-offery sits in the British Museum on an artifact known […]

To remove dead skin cells from their considerable bodies, humpback whales have been filmed scrubbing themselves in a sandy spa. Although this is not the first time this behavior has been suggested, this is the first time researchers have filmed them underwater rolling around in the sand on the sea bed. In these shallow bay […]

If you’ve ever heard the idea that HIV/AIDS was created in a US military laboratory, you’ve been exposed to a viral fake news story that was planted by the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. Despite this idea now being wholly disproven, it still holds traction in some parts of the world and serves as […]

If you’re not an avid cyclist, there’s a chance you won’t have come across the term “bonking” before. Actually, you probably have, but not in this context. Bonking is the word cyclists and endurance athletes give to that feeling of hitting a wall, the moment during your workout when all your reserves have run dry […]

Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and warnings by prominent AI researchers that we need to pause AI research lest it destroys society, people have been talking a little more about the ethics of artificial intelligence lately. The topic is not new: Since people first imagined robots, some have tried to come up […]

The first images of Earth from a brand new weather satellite have been sent back home and our planet looks spectacular. The new satellite reveals details about the weather over Europe and Africa at a level not possible before at 36,000 kilometers (22,370 miles) away from Earth. The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 (MTG-I1) is a […]

Jupiter may be called the “king of the planets,” but it looks like Saturn has the biggest following (for the time being, at least). New observations suggest that Saturn has over 100 confirmed moons – the most of any planet in the solar system, overtaking its old rival Jupiter. The latest count comes from the […]

There are people living among us who have a rare and perhaps valuable superpower – they never forget a face. We’re not just talking about being good at recognizing faces, we’re talking about an exceptional ability to recall details, even after just a brief glimpse at someone. Yet while this unusual trait has been known […]

Recent times have seen the rise of many conspiracy theories, from 5G will kill you to the slightly more enjoyable satirical “birds aren’t real” movement. Many have focused around the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccines developed to protect people from it. In short, they have all been a bit grim, and too harmful to be in any […]

A UK regulator has confirmed that a small number of babies with DNA from three different people have been born in the country. The technique to create “three-parent” embryos became legally permissible several years ago, but it’s only now that information has been obtained establishing that the procedure has been successfully used in the UK.  […]

A draft of the first-ever human pangenome has been announced by an international genomics collaboration, which will attempt to incorporate the incredible diversity of the human race into a single reference genome. The team hope that by bringing a range of ethnicities and populations across the world into the pangenome, they can more accurately represent […]

After the letdown and subsequent cancellation of Google Glass – the “unappealing” glasses with a display in your field of view to distract you – you’re right to be skeptical about wearable technology. But a new demo of a wearable artificial intelligence (AI) is causing (small amount) of buzz on the Internet, because it does […]

Spanish social media influencer Paula Gonu has claimed that following surgery on her knee, she served up a spaghetti bolognese for her and her partner using the discarded cartilage. Thirty-year-old Gonu told the Club 113 podcast (full episode in Spanish below) that she had required surgery on her knee for an injury, and the surgeons had […]

Destruction of the world’s rainforests has long been a topic of environmental concern, with a warming world, habitat loss, and species extinctions all coming to the fore. While the impact of climate change has also been felt in the world’s oceans, and well documented in the media through the loss of coral reefs, there’s one […]