Deborah Bloomfield

Imagine returning to your home, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, after it had been crushed and crozzled by a violent volcanic eruption. The streets are buried in ash, your house is flattened beneath a shower of boulders, and your favourite bakery is nowhere to be found. Remarkably, there’s now evidence that some people did […]

The Sun is just past its peak of activity for this solar cycle, but that does not mean it is done with its fireworks. A relatively weak flare yesterday has caused a minor radio blackout, and it might lead to some aurorae on Friday as a large wave of plasma has left the Sun, speeding […]

Humans are not the most rational beings when it comes to fear, especially about things that are interesting and dramatic in the media, but are rare occurrences in real life. If you are a millennial, you’ll know by now that quicksand, while dangerous, is not quite the threat we were promised as kids. Asteroids, however, […]

Tumors are abnormal masses of tissue that usually form when cells go rogue, be that due to uncontrollable cell growth or division, or refusing to die when they should. We have rounded up some of the most bizarre cases where tumors didn’t just misbehave… but went completely off-script.   A patient’s tumor was accidentally transplanted […]

Sometimes science stumbles across something amazing while researching another thing entirely. Most recently? That the humble apple snail (Pomacea canaliciulata) can regrow its eyes, regenerating them after injury or amputation. The discovery came about after Assistant Professor Dr Alice Accorsi began working on a solution for the invasive apple snails that are munching their way […]

When it comes to bizarre wildlife and freaky fauna, Australia and the Galápagos often steal the limelight, but Madagascar is an even stranger world unto itself. Located off the east coast of Africa, it is home to 1,314 species of native land and freshwater vertebrates, up to 90 percent of which are found nowhere else […]

In 2016, the sea ice in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea developed an enormous hole twice the size of Wales – the country, not a pod of giant mammals. The following year it returned, but the reasons remained unknown. Now they have been explained as a result of previously understood factors and a rare form of salt […]

Amid its towering ice sheets, Antarctica conceals a fiery secret, a landscape dotted with volcanoes. Most remain dormant, inactive, or buried beneath the ice, but some speculate that as the surrounding ice melts, these sleeping giants could stir back to life. The last major melting event on Earth occurred between 12,000 and 7,000 years ago […]

As the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth circles the Sun, the Sun itself travels around the center of the Milky Way—rising and falling above and below the galaxy’s plane along the way. A study has suggested that this motion of our star through the galaxy potentially takes us through regions of space that […]

Every now and then, one of the robots on Mars sends back a picture of an unusual rock it has found on its journeys. After all, that’s one of the reasons we sent them there. These can range from the interesting (such as the donut-shaped rock which may not be from the planet) to the […]

High up in the tree tops of Peru live all manner of species – from red howler monkeys to tiny tamarins, these species are perfectly adapted for life above the ground. However, roads for logging are cutting up their environment, separating trees by more than a monkey’s jump. That’s where wildlife bridges come into play, […]

The largest wildfire currently burning in the US is sweeping through Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park, scorching more than 51,000 hectares (126,000 acres) and blanketing the surrounding area in thick smoke. To make matters worse, hot, dry conditions continue to fuel the flames as ominous “fire clouds” loom overhead. The fire, named the Dragon Bravo […]

It is all happening in August! We are just days away from the peak of the Perseids, there is going to be a Black Moon later this month, and right now and for several weeks, you can see not just one but six planets in the night sky, four of which are visible to the […]

Particles known as tensor mesons are created when high-energy photons interact. These mesons have now been proposed to have a larger effect on photon behavior than previously thought, and provide a new way to test the validity of the Standard Model of particle physics. Here’s an experiment any reader can try. Take two torches into […]

Room temperature plays a surprisingly important role in determining how far apart people need to be to prevent disease transmission in a queue, a new study suggests. Consequently, the 2 meters (6 feet) apart queuing adopted during the pandemic was not always appropriate. How many lives may have been lost for lack of this information […]

Cockatoos have at least 30 dance moves they love to show off, and while not every species has been spotted making every move, some individuals combine moves in ways others don’t to create further metamoves. The purpose of the dancing is unknown, because while it may have evolved from courtship, it now occurs far more […]

There’s something funny about how sea or aquatic monsters are depicted. Think about the Loch Ness Monster, for example. How many times have you seen images or drawings showing a beastie poking its head above the water while a vertical undulating serpent-like body follows behind? This particular representation of the mythical “Nessie” is pretty illustrative […]

The oldest government computer still in operation today is over 25 billion kilometers (15.5 billion miles) from Earth, and despite well-documented issues, it still runs far better than we could expect. While you may rush out to buy the latest hardware necessary to run the latest computer games, governments and large organizations can end up […]

The miniature “Hobbit” humans of Flores Island may have come from the nearby island of Sulawesi, where researchers have discovered evidence for hominin occupation up to 1.5 million years ago. It’s currently unclear exactly which ancestral species was present on the Indonesian island at this early point in our history, but the journey from mainland […]

If you were to go strolling at night in the right part of New Zealand, you just might be blessed by a visit from one of nature’s most delectable-looking gastropods: the pickle slug. Also known as putoko ropiropi, the gherkin slug, leaf vein slug, or Athoracophorus papillatus, these slugs are famous for the little spikes […]