Deborah Bloomfield

People in the United States seem to be an outlier in the amount of misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 they share compared to four other English-speaking countries, according to a new study. People in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand were exposed to roughly the same amount of misinformation online – but […]

Over 50,000 Bitcoins that were stolen from the online black market Silk Road have been seized by US authorities. When the cryptocurrency was seized it was worth $3.36 billion, making the catch the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) largest cryptocurrency seizure ever at the time.  On November 4, 32-year-old James Zhong pled guilty to committing […]

Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and intriguing. When the 2022 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for research shedding light […]

As world leaders assemble for the United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Egypt, it’s hard to be optimistic the talks will generate any radical departure from the inexorable rise in global carbon emissions over the past two centuries. After all, before last year’s Glasgow talks, experts warned the summit was the world’s last chance […]

In a clip that has been widely shared across the Internet, one TikTok user has buried a sarcophagus filled with a single bag of flamin’ hot Cheetos to mess with future archaeologists. TikTok user Sunday Nobody made the 1,360-kilogram (3,000-pound) sarcophagus using reinforced concrete, as well as a headstone, on which he used a laser […]

The US government may have sexually “teased” soldiers in the First World War in an attempt to get them to fight harder, argues a paper published by Cambridge historian Eric Wycoff Rogers. Yep, it really is as strange as it sounds.   In 1914, war breaks out in Europe. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia and […]

A mysterious tunnel that’s not been seen for centuries has recently been rediscovered beneath a colossal ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to the god Osiris. Rather sensationally, there has been some wild speculation that this is the tunnel that leads to the long-lost tomb of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.  While those bold claims may be overstated, […]

A device designed to allow patients with speech paralysis to silently spell out messages is the subject of a new study. While it has so far only been tested in one person, it could pave the way for future approaches that may be life-changing for people experiencing communication difficulties due to paralysis. The loss of […]

A particularly strong solar storm cracked a hole in Earth’s magnetic field this week, sparking some epic – and rare – pink auroras. No, the planet hasn’t been attacked by intergalactic unicorns riding in on a trail of pink stardust, but it does take some unusual circumstances to create this particular colorful light show. The […]

When we think about our Bronze Age ancestors, it’s easy to imagine their lives being an endless loop of the four Fs: fighting, feeding, fleeing, and, uh, mating. What we tend to forget is that ancient people were, you know, people – not that different from you or us. They had besties; they liked to […]

A 15-week-old kitten has bamboozled the care team at a UK charity. Originally thought to be a female, the new tabby-and-white arrival, named Hope, has been found to have no sex organs.  Cats Protection admitted the kitten into their care, and on further investigation found that Hope has neither external nor any internal sexual parts. […]

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken an incredible picture of the galactic system Arp 248, also known as Wild’s Triplet. These three interacting galaxies are renowned for having a luminous bridge of stars between two of them, an indication of the merging process that is underway between these objects. The image was released by the […]

More frozen mummies like Ötzi the Iceman could be revealed as rising global temperatures cause ice to melt, argue the authors of a new study. Previously, researchers had attributed the ancient murder victim’s longevity to a series of happy accidents that had kept his body frozen for millennia, yet more recent analyses suggest that Ötzi’s […]

Oculus VR founder and designer of the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey, has unveiled his latest virtual reality (VR) masterpiece: A headset that makes sure that if you die in the game, you die in real life. Luckey explained in a blog post that he was halfway to completing his headset (which he has called NerveGear) […]

The COP27 climate summit is underway in Egypt and there have been some potent words to open the show from UN Secretary‑General António Guterres: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” Not known for mincing his words on the climate crisis, Guterres gave the remarks during the […]

In mammalian social species, conflict resolution forms a big part of life. A study in Italy has explored the role of a third party in the aftermath of a fight – in pigs. A bystander pig can intervene after two other pigs have been fighting, the researchers found.  The effect of the bystander is either to […]

A man living in rural California believes that his house was burnt down after it was struck by a flaming meteorite that crashed to Earth. Bear in mind that the chances of this happening are astronomically slim – but not impossible. In California’s Nevada County, the house of cattle farmer Dustin Procita burst into flames […]

For the first time in British mapping history, the three norths have met at a single place on land. According to the Ordnance Survey of the UK, the convergence will continue for several years, making its way north (we’ll get to that bit) traveling from Langton Matravers, near Swanage in Dorset, before leaving the UK […]

When it comes to the planet, billionaires could be a million times more destructive than the average person, according to a new study. Funded by Oxfam, the study looked into the investments of the 125 richest billionaires and discovered that their cumulative emissions were one million times greater than average, with their investments accounting for […]

In 1980, an optometrist who invented shatterproof lenses for glasses took the next obvious step in his career and began trying to harvest the jizz of Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Robert Klark Graham earned his optometrist career, but his real passion lay in collecting semen. The idea, which he turned into the “Repository for Germinal Choice”, […]