Deborah Bloomfield

As the planet heats up, glaciers worldwide are in retreat, and one above all others worries oceanographers. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey have published two new papers observing conditions at the base of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier to establish the factors driving its melting and its effect on global sea level rise. They found that […]

You can thank your Neanderthal ancestors each time you make it to school or work on time, as new research suggests that genes inherited from our extinct cousins may have endowed us with the ability to wake up bright and early. More specifically, you can thank your lazy lay-about Homo sapiens ancestors who mated with […]

Aging ancient bones and artifacts has long been done using radiocarbon by detecting the isotope carbon-14, but this method wasn’t perfect when it came to accuracy, limiting the conclusions we could draw from data. Now, to expand the capabilities of radiocarbon and better understand the movements of our ancient ancestors, scientists are introducing a new […]

At some point you may have come across an odd and frankly horrifying urban legend, which states that if you get your butt caught over a pool drain, your intestines can be – for genuine want of a better way of putting this – sucked out of your anus. The fact has shown up in […]

Never-before-seen footage of Titanic’s wreck is being released to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the movie Titanic. Peering around the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean, the raw footage shows the world’s most famous shipwreck in all its rusting and decaying glory.  The video footage was filmed during an expedition in July 1986 by researchers from […]

Black holes today are much bigger than they were nine billion years ago, even compared to the size of their galaxies, observations have found. In an effort to explain the scale of this anomaly, astrophysicists have hit on an explanation for dark energy, the mysterious force causing the universe to fly apart at ever increasing […]

Researchers have discovered that sketches and notes written by Leonardo da Vinci show that he was centuries ahead of his time in terms of his understanding of gravity. A medical engineer came across a number of sketched triangles accompanied by notes in da Vinci’s Codex Arundel.  Advertisement “What caught my eye was when he wrote […]

The Astronomy Photographer of the Year Awards features thousands of entries from countries all across the world. Space correspondent Dr Alfredo Carpineti takes us to The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and speaks to Dr Ed Bloomer, one of the judges, to get some top tips and give you the edge in this incredible international competition. Entries to […]

In the wake of winter waves of COVID, flu, and RSV – the so-called “triple-demic” – another virus has reared its ugly head. It seems norovirus, also called the “winter vomiting bug”, might be back with a vengeance: while outbreak data isn’t up to date, data on positive tests suggests cases in the US may […]

In case you’ve missed the excitement, recently the US has been shooting down mysterious and suspicious objects from its airspace. So far, four objects have been downed. The first object is believed by the US to be a Chinese spy balloon, while China denied this and claimed that it was a weather balloon blown off […]

A study into the surprisingly complex mechanisms behind snakes’ ability to hear has found that, despite previous assumptions, many snakes are capable of hearing airborne sounds as well as sensing ground vibrations. As snakes lack an external ear, it’s been widely accepted that they only sense soundwaves through ground vibrations via their belly scales. While […]

Senior Vice President at Google, Prabhakar Raghavan, has warned the public about a little-known problem with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots: they “hallucinate”. Google is set to launch its own rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a language model that can answer your questions and queries. Named Bard, the chatbot will roll out to the public in the […]

As bird flu continues to decimate poultry and wild bird populations around the world, the virus – a deadly strain called H5N1 – appears to be spreading to mammals. The virus has already been confirmed in foxes and otters in the UK, and more recently in four dead seals. Bird flu refers to influenza A […]

Sex can be wonderful, but it can also be tricky. Science may be the furthest thing from your mind when you’re getting intimate with someone. But actually, there’s a lot we can learn from science when it comes to sex. The science of sex is a broad field of research that encompasses many aspects of […]

A 19-year-old man from China has become the world’s youngest patient to be diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new case report. The patient experienced memory loss and problems concentrating at school for a period of two years, and doctors examining him concluded that he fit the diagnostic criteria for the disease, which […]

A skull belonging to a Byzantine-era woman in central Italy displays signs of having been surgically fiddled with on at least two separate occasions. Reporting the find in a new study, researchers say the unenviable patient probably underwent a series of trepanations in order to treat a “systemic pathological condition,” although they can’t say exactly […]

You wait decades for the military to start downing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) then suddenly they’re dropping out of the sky like month-old birthday balloons. The US has downed a fourth flying object this week, taking care to not rule out the possibility of aliens before taking a more sensible approach and denying it was […]

Last week a blog post on Blue Origin’s website made a claim that, if verified, could dramatically increase the prospects for establishing ongoing bases on the Moon. However, the curious lack of promotion the company – not usually known for avoiding publicity  – has so far given the announcement suggests they may still have some […]

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a virtual telescope that connects observatories all over the world. Thanks to a quirk of physics, the resulting instrument is the size of our planet, and it has been used to snap the first close-up images of supermassive black holes: Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way, […]