Deborah Bloomfield

Computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil has set some very specific timelines for when humanity will achieve immortality, and artificial intelligence (AI) will reach the singularity. The good news, if his predictions prove to be accurate, is that you just need to ride out the next seven years for your chance at living forever. Kurzweil […]

Underpants. You wear them nearly every day of your life, but probably don’t spend a hell of a lot of time thinking about them and their quirks.  For instance, in 2021 it came to our attention that not all of you knew what the holes at the front of boxer shorts were for (spoiler alert, […]

Scientists have grown “mini-antlers” on mice by inserting deer genes into the mouse genome, according to a new paper. The results suggest that mammals that have lost the ability to regenerate organs may still contain some regenerative genes, and that it may be possible to harness the rapid growth of antlers in other applications.  Growing […]

There’s a theory – and it is just a theory – that the human population on Earth was once decimated to just a few thousand individuals after a supervolcano violently erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. For a small sliver of history, humanity may have become an endangered species.  While not everyone buys this […]

When quantum physicists refer to something as “strange” you know it’s really doing something odd. People who’ve got comfortable with superposition and “spooky action at a distance” have a high bar for what is weird. Yet certain elements have earned the category “strange metals” because how they conduct electricity is different from more familiar metals […]

In the last twenty minutes of April 14, 1912, disaster struck in the North Atlantic. The RMS Titanic, the largest ship anywhere on the ocean and temporary home to more than 2,200 passengers and crew, collided with an iceberg. More than 300 feet (91 meters) of the boat’s hull was ripped open, and within three […]

NASA archives hold a pivotal technical memorandum inherited from its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, dating back to 1933. Would it shape the face of aeronautical engineering? Not exactly, though its inventor believed it to be a stepping stone to the modern jet engine. Would it introduce us to the fattest plane in […]

It seems that, when it comes to asteroids hitting our planet, people only have a binary response: not taking it seriously, and being terrified that it might happen at any moment. We ought to have a pragmatic attitude – it is important to not underestimate the threat without exaggerating it. Many organizations are keeping us […]

A new virtual reality (VR) experience allows curious onlookers to take a glimpse inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a “doomsday-proof” shelter in the Arctic that was set up to protect the world’s seeds from disaster and environmental devastation. The online experience was launched earlier this month by the Virtual Tour Company as part of […]

War is a lucrative business, which also means that mistakes can be costly. One of the priciest screw-ups in recent military history comes from the US army, which reportedly wasted heaps of dollars developing a stylish-looking new camouflage, only to discover it didn’t effectively hide their soldiers.  The Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) was designed in […]

Gravitational wave observatories have measured many collisions between the dense objects in the universe. Most of them have been black holes, but there have been two detections of neutron stars merging with each other. One of them was also seen by regular observatories, providing incredible insights into these extreme events. But astronomers want to know […]

As clocks march ahead and daylight saving time begins, there can be anxiety around losing an hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change. Usually an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time, but even this minimal loss can cause problems. There can be significant health repercussions of this forcible shift in […]

The Texas Department of State Health Services has launched a search after a camera containing radioactive material went missing in the Houston area.  According to the department, the camera went missing on March 9, 2023, with the last confirmed location being 4040 Little York Road in Houston. The Statewide Maintenance Company lost the camera, which […]

Kiska the orca, the last of her species to be held in captivity in Canada, has died at the approximate age of 47. For the last four decades, Kiska had been living at Ontario theme park Marineland, after having been captured in Icelandic waters back in 1979. She was famously captured alongside another orca, Keiko, […]

Prehistoric cave paintings have helped researchers identify the ancient creatures that once co-existed with humans across Eurasia, although rock art in South Africa appears to contain a few single-horned curveballs. Apparently depicting unicorns, these rupestrian sketches once fueled a colonial hunt for the mythical creatures, and researchers are still uncertain as to what these artworks […]

Cousin marriages may be taboo to most of us in the West, but historically, unions between first and second cousins were once commonplace in some parts of the world. Our ancestors really did give Game of Thrones a run for its money in terms of incest: the ancient Greeks were at it, Tutankhamun married his […]

Spinning great apes are the focus of new research that suggests getting dizzy may be a way of these animals altering their cognitive state. If true, it could indicate that we were seeking mind-altering activities before Homo sapiens even evolved, and raises questions about how their use may have influenced the evolution of the human […]

Line up the skulls of grizzlies and black bears and they’ll look like spuds compared to that of the southern elephant seal (something Steve Backshall handily did in a video for BBC Earth back in 2007, in case you want to take a look). They are the biggest seals on the planet, weighing up to […]

Centuries before freight ships and telecommunications, the far-flung corners of Eurasia were hooked together by a network of trade routes known as the Silk Road. It ran from some 1,500 years from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century CE and became a hugely influential force in the modern world. After all, it wasn’t […]