Deborah Bloomfield

A few years ago, strange black stains began to appear on a collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous drawings and writings: The Codex Atlanticus. The codex, housed since 1997 in a controlled micro-climate at Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, began showing signs of blackening. Investigation showed that these darkened patches were on some 210 pages of […]

India is on track to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by mid-2023. Roughly before the end of June, India’s population is projected to be 1.4286 billion, compared with China’s 1.4257 billion, according to new estimates from the United Nations (UN).  The data comes from a new report by the United Nations Population […]

For decades in the Cândido Godói (CG) municipality in Brazil, there was a strange mystery: The rate of twin births is significantly higher than the surrounding area, and twin births around the world. Studies have put the twin birth rate at 10 percent in one district, which is “significantly higher than the 1.8 percent rate […]

The Michael J Fox Foundation has announced the findings of a landmark paper that identified a biomarker for Parkinson’s disease with high accuracy, which may be able to indicate disease before typical symptoms appear. The researchers believe the biomarker will allow scientists to finally define Parkinson’s disease biologically, opening up new routes in diagnostics and […]

Every year, on April 19, an important anniversary rolls around that you may never have heard of. To those in the know, it’s called Bicycle Day, and it commemorates the first-ever intentional LSD trip.  It all started when a Swiss chemist called Albert Hofmann had a very peculiar time while cycling home from the lab. […]

A runner has been disqualified from the 80-kilometer (50-mile) Manchester to Liverpool Ultra race, after tracking data revealed she partly used a car. Dr Joasia Zakrzewski, a record-breaking athlete who regularly competes in long-distance events, finished third in the race on April 7. However, the race organizers brag that you can watch live with GPS […]

Buying gifts is difficult, even when you aren’t purchasing them for an incredibly wealthy man who also owns all the UK’s swans. Fortunately for the Pope, he has a catalog of unusual artifacts at the Vatican just perfect for the occasion and has gifted the King of England a piece of the “True Cross” for […]

You may have heard about an asteroid set to fly near Earth that is the size of 18 platypus, or maybe the one that’s the size of 33 armadillos, or even one the size of 22 tuna fish. These outlandish comparisons are the invention of Jerusalem Post journalist Aaron Reich (who bills himself as “creator […]

It has been recognized for quite a while that the human nose is capable of recognizing over 1 trillion different odors. With the old favorites like cut grass, freshly baked bread, and the smell of new books all set to please those with a sense of smell, research has explained why laundry dried outside in […]

The natural world is full of all kinds of strange phenomena, from spooky Brocken specters to  chocolate waterfalls. Now, we explain the optical illusion showing the lake that seemingly floats above the sea below.  At the center of a rough triangle between the top of Scotland, the east coast of Iceland, and the west of […]

A hunting competition in New Zealand has come under fire from the New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) for asking children under the age of 14 to kill feral cats. The North Canterbury Hunting Competition, which aims to raise money for a local school, was offering $250 to the child […]

Imagine the upset: a gang of hairy houseflies arrive at your dinner without an invitation and take a seat on top of your favorite dish. They take a few steps, rub their grubby hands together, puke, then rudely leave. Is your food still safe to eat? Generally speaking, the risk of falling sick is relatively […]

Mix a tiger and lion and you get a liger, cross a polar bear and a grizzly and you have a pizzly, but what happens if you mush up some hallucinogenic toad slime with a bunch of magic mushrooms? According to psychonaut lore, this mind-mangling mix produces a hybrid psychedelic drug called psilomethoxin, and while […]

This month’s new Moon on April 20 is giving skywatchers plenty of reasons to look up this week. Not only is it instrumental in the rare once-in-a-decade type of eclipse happening on Thursday but it’s providing an exceptionally good opportunity to catch the phenomenon known as the Da Vinci Glow. Instead of just seeing the […]

If we had a dime for how many times green lasers falling from the sky have been caught on camera in the last six months, well, we would have two dimes, which is not much but it is weird that it happened twice. Just a few months back we reported on a Matrix-like glitch that […]

Supposedly, artificial intelligence (AI) is coming for all our jobs. Well, maybe not all – researchers recently put AI in control of their satellite to take images of Earth targets, and it took a route that has absolutely bewildered them. Either it is operating at an intelligence far beyond our comprehension, or it just makes […]

Say, have you heard the one about the Abderite who saw a eunuch talking to a woman and asked whether she was his wife? Upon hearing that eunuchs couldn’t take wives, the Abderite replied: “so, is she your daughter?” Didn’t tickle your funny bone? It probably sounded better in the original Latin – along with […]

The European Space Agency mission JUICE launched last Friday with a lot of excitement and will reach Jupiter in 2031, after an 8-year journey. NASA’s Europa Clipper will launch next year and arrive in 2030. And yet the Voyager probes took just less than two years to get to the largest planet in the Solar […]

The coastal town of Exmouth in Western Australia is due to experience one of the most spectacular astronomical phenomena on April 20 2023 – a total solar eclipse. Eclipses have entranced us for millennia. But it turns out calculating exactly when and where we can watch an eclipse in its full glory can be surprisingly […]

Painstaking archaeological research and new DNA evidence has revealed fascinating insights into the Xiongnu empire, the world’s first nomadic imperial power. The research not only shows how ethnically diverse this empire was, but also the critical role princesses played in building its political structure.   The Xiongnu empire arose on the Mongolian steppe around 2,500 […]