Deborah Bloomfield

As Thanksgiving rolls around once again, so too does an increased chance of spending the following days sitting on the toilet, fighting for your life. Not just from eating too much of your grandma’s delightfully creamy mashed potatoes (curse you, lactose intolerance), but from some pretty dodgy food handling – including the big no-no that […]

Of the five dwarf planets in the Solar System – including Eris, Ceres, Makemake, and Haumea – Pluto is easily the best-known due to its brief categorization as a regular planet. Long before it could even make one turn around the Sun, it was demoted again. A surprising number of astronomical bodies have been discovered […]

When you think of a squirrel, your mind is probably more drawn to images of cute little woodland creatures, or even a critter burying acorns in the park. However, for researchers in Japan the tale gets a little more grisly, as they observed a squirrel chowing down on a bone. Japanese squirrels (Sciurus lis) are […]

If you own a freezer, it’s likely you’ve at some point had to contend with freezer burn. That package of meat or bag of leftovers you tucked away safely for another day has come out looking a funny color and covered in ice. Is it still safe to eat, and how can you stop this […]

There’s only one country in the world that lies entirely above 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) in elevation: Lesotho. Known as the “The Kingdom in the Sky,” for obvious reasons, the entire territory of the landlocked kingdom in Southern Africa sits above 1,400 meters (4,593 feet).  In other words, the entire territory of Lesotho is at […]

With the world’s polar regions melting at a dizzying rate, scientists have toyed with the idea of constructing giant underwater “curtains” around ice sheets to protect the wider world from rising sea levels. Beyond the perils of radical geoengineering projects, experts in international relations warn that the plan could spark political turmoil like we’ve never […]

There’s an incredible meme that depicts a chicken looking to the skies Simba style and being met with a Tyrannosaurus rex saying “Remember who you are.” It’s a fantastic visual and one that carries some truth, because the closest living relative to T. rex could well be a chicken, or possibly an ostrich. This was […]

There was a period in the 1950s and 60s when sleep deprivation was all the rage. Sparked by radio DJs attempting to outdo each other’s wildly dangerous – yet presumably quite boring – publicity stunts, the record for staying awake was repeatedly broken and extended. Eventually, however, Guinness World Records called a halt to the […]

The death of six tourists visiting Laos is suspected to be the result of mass methanol poisoning, after all are believed to have consumed alcoholic drinks tainted with the toxic substance. With officials issuing fresh warnings about the dangers of ingesting methanol, here’s what you should know about what it is and how it affects […]

Earlier this year, a former US Air Force pilot and intelligence officer raised hopes that Amelia Earhart’s plane may have been discovered after scanning the Pacific Ocean floor using sonar. Unfortunately, after further investigation, the plane-like object appears to be a rock. On July 2, 1937, while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate […]

There are a lot of particles that come from space and rain down on us, every second of every day. If we include neutrinos, we think trillions of them are passing through your body right now, but if we just focus on cosmic rays from beyond the Solar System, we still get a fair amount […]

Birth control, contraception, family planning – whatever you call it, how long have people been coming up with ways to prevent (or strategically time) a pregnancy? The first oral contraceptive was approved in the US in 1960, but methods of contraception have been around much further back in history than that. In the beginning One […]

The Sun is surrounded by an atmosphere of plasma that we call the corona. It is nearly 1 million degrees Celsius (1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit) of hot plasma stretching far into the Solar System. Black holes also have a corona, but astronomers have struggled to completely understand its shape and how it relates to the […]

Long before the rise of Rome, the Italian peninsula teemed with several different cultures, one of the most intriguing being the Picene. A new genetic analysis has shed light on this often-overlooked civilization, uncovering surprising details about their people. Scientists led by the Sapienza University of Rome analyzed ancient DNA from over 100 skeletons found […]

A test exists for a leading explanation for the nature of dark matter, but it relies on catching a supernova in the moment of explosion. Although we now do that quite frequently, the supernova needs to be closer than any we have seen for decades, and we have to have a gamma-ray telescope pointing in […]

Earlier this year, the number of moons orbiting Earth temporarily doubled, admittedly from the low starting point of “one”. Taking a closer look at the new mini-moon, astronomers have learned more about its origin. On August 7, astronomers discovered a new near-Earth object, dubbed 2024 PT5. Analyzing the object, around 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter, […]

We all know that the animal kingdom is full of creatures doing some pretty remarkable and sometimes downright weird activities. Whales are creating bubble nets to catch krill, while in the insect world, juvenile dragonfly nymphs are breathing through their butts.  Dragonflies are pretty ancient and have been flying about on Earth since the Paleozoic […]

It’s not often that fruit gets you blushing, but might we recommend you don’t watch videos of the squirting cucumber at work. The mechanics behind this suggestively named plant’s bizarre seed distribution have now been revealed in explosive detail, as scientists at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford have revealed how it […]

A groundbreaking new study has opened the book on chimpanzee culture and its transmission, revealing compelling evidence that it is cumulative and spreads through social groups over generations. Using what they’re calling a “genetic time machine,” scientists have peered back into thousands of years’ worth of gene transfer, and spotted patterns between migrating females and […]

A new astronomical instrument has had its first outing observing the velocities of colliding galaxies in the famous Stephan’s Quintet. It has revealed the rate at which one of these galaxies is crashing through the others, and the consequences, which astronomers have likened to the sonic boom created by a jet fighter exceeding the speed […]