Deborah Bloomfield

Antarctica might look like a frozen desert populated only by penguins on shore leave, but parts of it are ice-free. More than a century ago, explorers were surprised to learn that while life may not thrive there, it survives in the form of algae, bacteria, and even small animals such as springtails. These creatures’ ancestry […]

It might not have a place in a fairytale like the goose that laid golden eggs, but there’s a bacterium that can absorb compounds rich in toxic metals and extract gold from them, producing tiny gold nuggets. The bacterium in question is called Cupriavidus metallidurans and lives in soil rich in toxic elements. As reported […]

The discovery of the first interstellar visitor, a space rock called ‘Oumuamua, sent waves of excitement across the scientific community. It also started a mystery. The object had all the characteristics of an asteroid, smallish size and no visible tail approaching the Sun; and yet as it approached our star, it mysteriously accelerated, behaving more […]

A “marsupial sabertooth” roamed the jungles of South America until its extinction 3 million years ago. Thylacosmilus atrox was a member of the Sparassondonta, a group of mammalian carnivores that are related to today’s marsupials. Thought to have weighed 100 kilograms (220 pounds), this creature had all the hallmarks of a successful ambush predator except […]

The world has already passed the birth of Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Gen Z – and now comes the dawn of the incoming generation: Generation Alpha. But what will this generation look like and what will be the trends that define their lives?  Generation Alpha describes people who were born from 2010 onwards […]

For most of us, staying in a hotel room is either something of a necessity – think business travel – or something to look forward to as part of a holiday or wider excursion. But what if I told you there’s a large chance your hotel room, despite how it might appear to the naked […]

Nanoplastics are everywhere – from the food we eat to the rain that falls from the sky – and a new study has found they are capable of causing malformations in the embryos of chickens. While it’s unclear how they may be impacting human health, the researchers suggest their findings should be a cause for […]

Married people tend to be less satisfied in their relationship when one partner has social anhedonia, a trait that causes someone to take less pleasure in social interactions. This mismatch between spouses also tends to lead to more destructive communication, according to a recent study. It’s often said that we humans are social creatures. Research […]

Stretching over 22 kilometers (14 miles) in East Java, Indonesia, is the Kawah Ijen volcanic complex. While this vast stretch of elaborate geological formations boasts striking views in the daylight, come nightfall the mountains spew electric blue streams of “lava”. Believed to be the only location on the planet to consistently exhibit these striking blue […]

There are around 30 ancient Egyptian obelisks around the world, but which is the biggest? The tallest standing one is the Lateran obelisk, reaching a huge 45.7 meters (150 feet) tall into the sky in Rome. But there is one larger that many haven’t heard of, probably because it never quite managed to stand up: […]

In the US Midwest in the 1970s, and briefly again in Oregon in 2019, thousands of cattle were found dead in mysterious circumstances.  The animals, numbering into the thousands, showed signs of mutilation, including having their organs and sexual organs removed, often with incisions described as “surgical”. Some, including five animals found in 2019, were […]

The witchy ways of UK mason bees are revealed in the Grasslands episode of David Attenborough and the BBC’s Wild Isles this Sunday. Flying around the countryside on broomsticks might seem like an unnecessary party trick for winged insects, but the peculiar behavior taps into the extremes these bees go to in order to protect […]

A new brain imaging study provides the deepest dive yet into the consciousness-altering effects of psychedelic drugs. After administering participants with the hallucinogenic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), researchers linked the drug’s trippy effects to the dysregulation of a key aspect of human brain function, all of which sheds new light on the nature of our highly […]

Researchers have found that the Antarctic region known as the Amundsen Sea Embayment has lost more than 3,000 billion tons of ice in 25 years. This makes it the fastest-changing region in Antarctica and it is currently the biggest contributor to sea level rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The Amundsen Sea Embayment is located […]

Vaccine makers claim they are planning ahead for an outbreak of avian flu and could adapt to any human variant within months, according to a recent interview with Reuters. While bird-to-human transmission remains rare, various companies have said they have the ability to modify existing vaccines to combat any new mutations that could make it […]

Abortion rights are big news at the moment – and for good reason, with countries like Poland and the USA seeing women and children becoming critically endangered or facing criminal charges as they seek medical care to end their pregnancies. Evidence continues to show that the laws behind these high-profile cases are not just unpopular, […]

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has already proved its worth at great feats of engineering, but the technology has now been used for its tastiest challenge yet: constructing cheesecake. Now, scientists have shown how their “digital cooking” approach can successfully create multi-layered cakes, which they argue has many advantages over those made by the hands of a […]

Stories of cryptids like the bogeyman, yeti, and Loch Ness monster persist over time thanks to “sightings”, alleged witness reports, and dubious accounts stretching back through the history of all things unexplainable. Few have quite the video footage though as one event attributed to “Colossal Claude”. Colossal Claude is said to roam the waters around […]

The samples collected by Hayabusa-2 from Asteroid Ryugu continue to reveal new insight into how the building blocks of life might have gotten to our planet. Scientists now report the discovery of niacin (also known as Vitamin B3) as well as uracil: one of the four nucleotide bases that are found in RNA, a molecule […]