Deborah Bloomfield

Astronomers are filling in gaps in our knowledge of ancient events by deciphering descriptions from folklore and ancient texts. In accounts of three solar eclipses from the island of Hokkaido, they have found one description that is both poetic and potentially quite scientifically important. Before the mid-19th century, written astronomical records from Hokkaido are sparse, […]

A group of neurons involved in recovery from paralysis has been identified in mice, shedding light on the mechanism that underpins rehabilitation of the spinal cord in response to electrical stimulation. This breakthrough could help in the development of targeted treatments for people with spinal cord injuries. The new study also recruited nine individuals with […]

The National Park Service is begging people to not lick the toxic toad that might make you have a psychedelic trip, no matter how much you want to try it. The Sonoran desert toad, Incilius alvarius, is a large toad that can be found in the southwestern United States and Mexico and is known to […]

Astronomers have found three observations of how one supernova explosion looked over different days – in a single image. The incredible snapshot did not require a special telescope setup or some cool processing software. The seemingly impossible event is the result of a particular astronomical phenomenon: gravitational lensing. Anything that has mass warps space-time. Big […]

Twitter is making changes to the blue tick verification system for the third time since Elon Musk took over as CEO two weeks ago. The latest change gets the system a little closer to what verification meant before Musk took over, while making people question what a Twitter Blue subscription is for. Shortly after taking […]

New research in mice has identified the brain circuitry involved in the learning of maternal behaviors. The findings could be a first step toward treatments for conditions such as postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. The study, led by a team at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, analyzed the behavior of female mice that had […]

The Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, was a pretty significant historical US event which (unless there are any babies out there reading this) we all lived through – but can your memories of the event be trusted? A new study says no, and your memories of the event can be affected by your political […]

The discovery of 24 bronze statues in an ancient thermal spring in Tuscany could redefine our understanding of the beginnings of the Roman Empire. Dated to around 2,300 years ago, the incredible figures provide new evidence that the ancient Romans may have prayed alongside their old enemy the Etruscans, even in times of war. Though […]

What was the worst time in history to be a human? You could put forward the case that the 20th century was pretty awful, considering it had two world wars and one of the worst pandemics in history. The 17th century was certainly no joke either, and the year 563 CE was pretty dire. But of […]

Defining how hot or cold a planet is can get complicated. Just take Earth as an example. The temperatures in the tropics are definitely different from the temperatures at the poles. Variations in temperature, even extreme ones, are common both in the atmospheres and at locations across the planets.   But if we are looking […]

Would you call me a quack if I were to tell you that there is a duck on Mars? Well, humans love turning vague stimuli into well-known patterns, a phenomenon called pareidolia, but in this case, the fowl similarity of this rock to a duck fits the bill. Alright, enough duck puns and onto the […]

A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) enthusiast has burned a priceless drawing in the apparently mistaken belief that it would increase the artwork’s value on the blockchain. As well as not recouping anywhere near the artwork’s value, the artist is under investigation by Mexican authorities for the stunt. Businessman Martin Mobarak burned the artwork by acclaimed Mexican […]

News about potential Russian military recruits fleeing the country for safer, more peaceful climes is hardly rare at the moment. One such story, though, has already found a happy ending – as Hvaldimir, a beluga whale named for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is now hoping to live out his retirement in a 500-acre aquatic sanctuary […]

A 3,700-year-old ivory delousing comb found at Tel Lachish, Israel, contains what appears to be the oldest full sentence written using the ancestor of alphabets in the place of its invention. According to a new study, the letters reveal a lot about how the alphabet evolved, plus the concerns of antiquity’s elite. The invention of writing […]

Earlier this year, an astronomer analyzing thousands of stars in the area the famous “Wow!” signal came from proposed a potential Sun-like star as the source of the mysterious signal that occurred over 40 years ago. Now, astronomers have turned two telescopes on the most promising star – 2MASS 19281982-2640123 – in an attempt to […]

People in the United States seem to be an outlier in the amount of misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 they share compared to four other English-speaking countries, according to a new study. People in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand were exposed to roughly the same amount of misinformation online – but […]

Over 50,000 Bitcoins that were stolen from the online black market Silk Road have been seized by US authorities. When the cryptocurrency was seized it was worth $3.36 billion, making the catch the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) largest cryptocurrency seizure ever at the time.  On November 4, 32-year-old James Zhong pled guilty to committing […]

Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and intriguing. When the 2022 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for research shedding light […]

As world leaders assemble for the United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Egypt, it’s hard to be optimistic the talks will generate any radical departure from the inexorable rise in global carbon emissions over the past two centuries. After all, before last year’s Glasgow talks, experts warned the summit was the world’s last chance […]

In a clip that has been widely shared across the Internet, one TikTok user has buried a sarcophagus filled with a single bag of flamin’ hot Cheetos to mess with future archaeologists. TikTok user Sunday Nobody made the 1,360-kilogram (3,000-pound) sarcophagus using reinforced concrete, as well as a headstone, on which he used a laser […]