Deborah Bloomfield

The devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday has caused catastrophic damage to Gaziantep Castle, a historic Roman-era castle in Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Region.  Photographs and footage from the scene show large parts of its ancient stone walls have fallen down the surrounding hillside. Some bastions in the east, south, and south-east parts […]

Five years ago yesterday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a Tesla into space, in a stunt that even the most hardened Musk haters would grudgingly admit is pretty cool.  The Roadster has since been on one hell of a journey, driving away from Earth at the impressive speed of 26,619 kilometers per hour (16,540 miles per […]

Researchers have crafted an artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of deciphering fragments of ancient Babylonian texts. Dubbed the “Fragmentarium,” the algorithm holds the potential to piece together some of the oldest stories ever written by humans, including the Epic of Gilgamesh. The work comes from a team at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany who have […]

A natural product made by bacteria in the genus Pseudomonas has been found to have antimicrobial properties. The substances, named keanumycins, have been shown in a new study to be effective against fungi that cause disease in both plants and humans. The rise in antimicrobial resistance means there is an urgent need to find new ways […]

Wind turbines are getting ever larger, particularly offshore, but even by the standards of modern titans those being installed at the Zhangpu Liuao offshore wind farm are absolute beasts. According to the China Global Television Network, the farm is to be the first outing of the 16-megawatt turbine being produced by Goldwind Science and Technology […]

JWST has discovered its first asteroid, and it is quite a small object, all things considered. The space rock is between 100 and 200 meters in length (300 to 650 feet), which is roughly the size of the Colosseum in Rome. It orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt, which is located between Mars […]

In 2017, a surprisingly popular Reddit post asked the scientists of the site a simple question: Do giraffes get struck by lightning more often than other animals? Well, not only are there a number of reports out there of giraffes being killed by lightning, there are also case reports which suggest the tall animals can […]

Scientists are developing a vaccine they hope could be the first immunization to fight against invasive fungal infections. While it has only been tested on animals so far, the research could eventually pave the way toward a broad-spectrum vaccine that could tackle the growing threat of drug-resistant fungi.  In a recent study, an experimental vaccine […]

When it came to sending people to the Moon, a lot of focus is on the rockets, the math, and the astronauts. However, the incredible machinery that was NASA in the 1960s also required some more down-to-Earth logistics. The space agency had to acquire land on Merrit Island in Florida in the early 1960s to […]

For the past year, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department (TPCHD) in Washington has been issuing multiple court orders for a resident to agree to treatment and isolation over an active case of tuberculosis. According to NBC News, the woman in question has refused the requests and may now be facing legal action. Tuberculosis is an […]

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected]. If dinosaurs died, how come there are birds? Caiden S., age 9, Wylie, Texas Advertisement Everyone knows what a bird is – and pretty much everyone knows what a dinosaur […]

Google is set to launch its own rival to Open AI’s ChatGPT, a language model that can answer your questions and queries. The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot named Bard will roll out to the public in the coming weeks. Bard, CEO of Google Sundar Pichai explained in an update, will initially be a scaled-down version […]

Here’s a question: would you rather fight one angry human or 15,000 furious ants? Aggressive naked apes can be a pain, but the smallness of insects is only an upside until they all club together. What if, say, all land insects on Earth were to combine? It’d be a hell of a force to be […]

A team of Chinese scientists has brought together two major revelations from General Relativity and found they may add up to something big when it comes to finding wormholes. Wormholes are conceived as tunnels through spacetime connecting two distant regions, allowing shortcuts that avoid the need to travel immense distances. Microlenses, despite their name, are […]

Sleep and rest are essential parts of staying healthy. Yet, according to the CDC, one in three adults report not getting enough sleep each night. And while there are many old wives’ tales floating around to try and help, modern science has come up with better, easier ways to help your body relax. For those […]

Archeological discoveries along the Portuguese coast show that Neanderthals were fine diners who enjoyed roasting crabs and other shellfish over 90,000 years ago. The new study is yet another reminder that our closest cousins were not the knuckleheads they are often depicted as, but an intelligent species that bear many close similarities to us.  Researchers […]

The sometimes astonishing sex lives of animals are well known, especially the huge range in penis structures, evolved to increase the number of offspring that males father. For example, ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises, and echidnas (also known as spiny anteaters) have a four-headed penis. But what about female genitalia? For hundreds of years, scientists assumed […]

Gazing upon the wrinkled face of a pug it can be hard to believe that all dogs are descended from wolves. We know older breeds are genetically more similar to wolves than modern ones, but are there some easy-to-spot indicators as to which is which? A new study says yes, as it found that a […]

A woodpecker has filled a house’s walls with acorns, using the wall cavity as food storage. The owners of the house in California called pest control who cut open a hole in the wall, allowing thousands upon thousands of acorns to fall out. Nick’s Extreme Pest Control posted images of the situation to Facebook. Advertisement […]

A care home in Iowa has been fined $10,000 after wrongly declaring a patient dead. The woman, who was 66 years old, had spent almost 50 minutes zipped inside a body bag while being transported to a funeral home before staff members realized she was still alive. She was presumed dead at 6 am on […]