Deborah Bloomfield

A rare and powerful stratospheric warming event appears to be unfolding high above the South Pole – and it could have a knock-on effect through the global weather system.  Both of Earth’s poles are surrounded by a circling, swirling mass of cold air in the stratosphere, located between approximately 12 and 50 kilometers (7.5 and […]

In the summer of 2010, not long after beekeeping was made legal in New York City, a mysterious phenomenon arose in the hives of Red Hook, Brooklyn. As though living up to the colorful part of the neighborhood’s name, bright red bees began buzzing around. So too were their hives dripping with red, instead of […]

In the 1970s and 80s, geologists noticed unusual layers deposited in ancient rocks, dating to around 232-4 million years ago. Through investigative science, it revealed one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of Earth, defined by 2 million years of rainfall and the emergence of dinosaurs In the Eastern Alps, one team investigated […]

Europe’s closest thing to a supervolcano has been stirring for the past 20 years, culminating in a significant spike in seismic activity since the beginning of 2022. Naturally, these developments have got people’s bottoms squeaking, although the likelihood of a full-blown eruption is something scientists are still trying to calculate. The rest of this article […]

Sometimes, just receiving a diagnosis can be enough to help someone start to feel better. This phenomenon has been noticed by patients and clinicians, but until now it didn’t have a name. Now, thanks to a pair of US-based researchers writing in a recent paper, it’s been dubbed the “Rumpelstiltskin effect”. In case you’re unfamiliar […]

Over 60 years ago, a family in Mexico began to fall mysteriously ill. Fevers, fatigue, and strange symptoms swept through the household, but no one could explain why. The cause wasn’t in the water, nor in the food. It was a small metal capsule containing cobalt-60, a radioactive material, that had been sitting quietly in […]

Small, scarce, and shy, the white-bellied pangolin has one of the highest number of chromosomes among all mammals: a total of 114 chromosomes. However, this is just the beginning of these animals’ bizarre genetic quirks.  Pangolins are a family of small, scale-covered mammals that includes eight species, four of which live in Asia and four […]

Many people expect that the future of humanity will involve Mars. The Red Planet is close enough and not immediately deadly like Venus. That makes it a good enough candidate for future human exploration, and maybe even settling the place. But good enough doesn’t make it good. Unlike Milton’s Lucifer, we can not make a […]

From the early days of JWST’s scientific observations of the distant universe, scientists started noticing a population of curious objects. They are very red, extremely compact, and there are a lot of them. They were nicknamed “Little Red Dots,” and they are so distant that their light had to travel for at least 12 billion […]

Sea otters are surprising creatures. They’re athletic, intelligent, and actually incredibly scandalous with disturbingly precise diets (don’t be fooled by all that fluffy hand holding). Another surprise they’ve been keeping from you? Sometimes their bones and teeth are purple. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access […]

Who’s the true king of the carnivorans? Lions, tigers, or bears, perhaps? Turns out there’s something else the Tin Man should’ve been afraid of – well, at least if The Wizard of Oz took place a little closer to the sea. This fearsome animal? The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina), also known as the largest […]

For hundreds of years, sailors have reported freak, gigantic waves hundreds of feet high, and seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Hundreds of leagues from land, or any other witnesses, they would swallow up ships whole, only rarely leaving a survivor or two to tell the tale.  But, well, sailors have said a lot of stuff […]

When Professor Bernal Rodríguez-Herrera at the University of Costa Rica received a phone call about some ugly bats in San Ramon, Costa Rica, he didn’t think much of it. “Most people think all bats are ugly, so I didn’t take the report very seriously at first,” he said. As it happened, what they had spotted […]

The Salmon River in Alaska winds for many kilometers through wild forest, tundra, and stunning mountain valleys. Once containing the purest water, sustaining fish and other wildlife, it’s now cloudy and orange from climate change and the thawing of permafrost. This change not only alters the landscape, but it’s also unleashing toxicity that threatens ecosystems, […]

We often think of heavy animals as fairly solid; the blue whale, African elephants, and rhinos all seem fairly substantial because of their sheer volume. However, there is one creature that swims in Earth’s oceans that has its own heavy title, and yet is mainly made up of soft, squishy parts. Meet the lion’s mane […]

An intruder has been detected in the Canadian Arctic for the first time, and it’s not good news for the health of our planet. The bay barnacle is a known invasive species that’s been making its unwelcome mark on European waters and the Pacific ocean, disrupting ecosystems as it spreads. There was a time we […]

Sometimes when you’re a professional, the tools used by regular folks just won’t do. Formula One racers have those games console-looking steering wheels; award-winning photographers depend on more than the lens on their smartphone; and housekeepers, maids, cleaners, janitors, and other professional tidier-uppers use microfiber cloths.  But what actually are these special towels, and why […]

This is the story of a stowaway rat, who hopped on a transatlantic flight, caused mass panic, had its travel plans rudely interrupted by a one-way trip to a scientific facility, and is now teaching the world a whole lot about global disease transmission. Sit back, relax, and let us tell you a tale.  In […]

Every year, for the last 17 years, the Royal Observatory of Greenwich has awarded the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year, and we are stunned by the sheer amount of photographic talent and celestial beauty that can be combined in this selection of images. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

Global warming is a tricksy beast. In some places, it’s transforming once-lush environments into barren deserts; in others, it’s doing essentially the opposite – albeit through an irony-fueled, monkey’s paw kind of interpretation of “re-green the Earth’s deserts”. Now, a new set of photos from NASA has laid bare a striking example of the latter […]