Deborah Bloomfield

This week on Break It Down: The oldest fingerprint in the world might be left by a Neanderthal hoping to complete a face, scientists propose seeding life on Enceladus to see what would happen, we’re starting to understand more about the Incas’ mysterious string writing system, bioacoustics research could pave the way for us to […]

Have you ever heard of the tooth-billed pigeon? Also known as manumea, or the “little dodo” (as one of its closest living relatives), it’s so rare it’s considered a “lost” species. One that hasn’t been photographed since 2013, but hope is not lost. Scientists were able to successfully detect a bird in the wild, and […]

In about 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of hydrogen at its core. This will make it swell up into a red giant, as it begins to fuse helium instead. In the process, we can say goodbye to Mercury for sure, Venus most likely, and probably even Earth. But this assumes that nothing […]

Dead spiders tend to curl up in a rather creepy clawed position, but beyond looking a little ominous, it seems their lifeless bodies may have useful applications in robotics. Scientists from Rice University have harnessed the unusual locomotion mechanism of wolf spiders to create a type of robotics they’ve coined “necrobotics”. That’s right. Scientists are […]

Wherever you stand on the practicality of settling Mars, it’s really quite a small ambition compared to dreams of settling other star systems. There are a great many engineering, and arguably social, problems to solve to create a base on another planet within the Solar System, but when it comes to interstellar travel the barriers […]

This is the universe like you have never seen before. Thanks to the extraordinary sharpness of JWST, many hours of work, and the warping of spacetime by a massive galaxy cluster, we have some of the oldest starlight that has ever been seen in the universe. The image took nine snapshots and 120 hours of […]

When we think of dinosaurs, images of bones and lean, reptile-like beasts come to mind, but a new study may have just revealed a softer side to dinosaurs: chubby cheeks. Technically known as soft buccal tissue, it’s being described as an “unexpected” find, changing what we know about how their lower jaw connected to the […]

It was June of 2021, and the Pacific Northwest was melting. Caught in a freak “heat dome”, temperatures in the normally mild region were soaring to unprecedented highs. The mercury hit triple figures in Fahrenheit for four straight weeks; in Canada, temperatures got to 49.6°C (121.3°F); it was so hot, in fact, that experts at […]

Two of the world’s most destructive invasive termites are spreading in the United States, but not only that – they’re also hybridizing. Individually, the Formosan subterranean termite and the Asian subterranean termite are capable of wreaking environmental and structural havoc, but together? A potentially disastrous storm could be brewing. In a new study, researchers from […]

Like many places in the US in the summer of 1944, the minds of people in the quiet Illinois city of Mattoon were probably occupied by news of the war. The Allied forces had recently invaded southern France, and Paris itself had been liberated only days ago. So, the night of August 31st was likely […]

Swimming with whales is illegal in Mexico – except when it isn’t. After the discovery of loopholes within the law, tourist trips where people can take to the water with orcas have boomed in a small bay village – and experts are calling for change. Orcas (Orcinus orca) can be found in oceans all over […]

Everything’s bigger in the US, they say, and that apparently includes its river gorges. But don’t be fooled by its grand size – this geological giant is a fresh-faced whippersnapper by Earth’s standards. Hells Canyon runs down the western flank of the US, snaking along the border of eastern Oregon and western Idaho before ending […]

Noctilucent cloud season is upon us. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere this summer, keep your head to the skies at sunset and you might be lucky enough to catch a sight of one of the rarest types of cloud on Earth. Noctilucent clouds, or “night-shining” clouds, are described as thin, wispy clouds that glow […]

Over 99.999 percent of Earth’s gold is locked away within the Earth’s metallic core, buried beneath 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) of solid rock. However, every now and again, a volcanic eruption gives us a little bit of a taste of what’s down there. Scientists at the University of Göttingen in Germany have recently been studying […]

When visiting one of Australia’s many tropical beaches, golden sands and glistening turquoise waters might not be the only things you’ll see – you could find bottles of vinegar, too. Why? It’s not for putting on your chippy tea, but for something altogether more dangerous: jellyfish stings. Australia is infamous for its many dangerous animals, […]

A British toddler has become the youngest ever member of the exclusive high-IQ (intelligence quotient) society, Mensa. The child, Joseph Harris-Birtill, who was born November 23, 2021, became a member of the non-profit organization when he was 2 years and 182 days old, according to Guinness World Records. In order to be accepted, the boy […]

In the 1920s, gray wolves were exterminated in the Yellowstone area because people viewed them as a threat to people and livestock. It was a grave mistake, and one we tried to correct back in 1995 when wolves were reintroduced to the area. Now, we face the tricky issue of monitoring the population’s health without, […]

Up until the time of the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Inca communities in the Andean highlands used a peculiar form of writing to record key events and keep track of their economic affairs. Known as khipus, these ancient documents are now largely indecipherable, although the work of one leading researcher has revealed how […]

In May 2015, a wave of death swept over rural Kazakhstan. In the space of just a few weeks, some 200,000 saiga antelopes mysteriously dropped dead. It took years of scientific snooping to find the culprit, but researchers eventually weeded out a clear chain of events that led to the mass die-off. Saiga antelopes (Saiga […]

According to a new study, however, we might have all that kind of backwards – or at least sideways. Non-vegetarians, it seems, may well be kinder and more “normal” than vegans and vegetarians – but their meat-eschewing peers are pretty far from the two extremes they’ve been assigned. Rather, they’re independent thinkers, valuing personal choice […]