Deborah Bloomfield

We recently reported on a new discovery about those zigzags you see in spider webs. Silken decorations like these are known as stabilimenta, and they can serve all kinds of purposes.  In the case of the zigzags, it’s thought they may act like extra doorbells, letting you know when food has arrived to a broader […]

Being intimate with your partner might help physical wounds heal faster, according to the results of a new study. And if you’re not in the mood for sex, then you might be able to achieve a similar effect simply by exchanging compliments with your other half. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. […]

Sometimes, the hardest battles are the simplest ones. Chess may have its drama, Magic can enchant, but few things compare to the pure, raw warfare of rock, paper, scissors. It’s a game that dates back potentially more than two millennia – and yet, even today, people argue about how best to play it. Is it […]

The Pleiades star cluster is 20 times larger than it looks at first sight, astronomers have learned. The cluster celebrated in cultures around the world, often under the name the “Seven Sisters”, is the remnant of something much greater, with hundreds of the original stars having escaped each other’s gravitational grip. Stars are usually formed […]

For the first time ever, scientists have captured underwater footage of humpback whale calves nursing from their moms. Recorded in Quandamooka Sea Country, Australia, the footage highlights just how important the area is as a nursing and resting site to the humpbacks. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

The idea that you can smell snow might sound like whimsical baloney dreamed up by romantics or a winter advertising campaign. However, there’s strong evidence that some people can sniff out a thunderstorm or rain, so the idea of snowfall having a scent is not too much of a stretch. The rest of this article […]

If you’ve ever been stung by a bee, you could be forgiven for shouting that the infernal beast must have been sent by the devil himself. Now, the discovery of a new species of the pied insect has added more evidence of their demonic nature, being as it is named Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer. The rest […]

The bear family is no stranger to being sizeable, standing firm at the top of the world’s largest land-dwelling carnivorans. Still, even the biggest groups have their smaller members, and the title for the smallest bear of all goes to a unique, freakishly long-tongued, and weirdly human-like animal: the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus). The world’s […]

You might’ve heard we’re trying to talk to whales. It sounds crazy, but it’s not so far-fetched, as in recent years we’ve been getting closer and closer to cracking the code of their remarkably complex communications. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. […]

Sea urchins look like an inanimate bundle of needles, but a closer look at these alien-like creatures reveals a surprisingly complex “all-body brain” that challenges our assumptions about nervous systems, evolution, and the nature of intelligence. Echinoderms – the phylum of animals that includes starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and others – are easy to […]

Astronomers have detected the radio burst from a massive eruption known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) on an M-type star 133 light-years away. CMEs have been suspected to occur on other stars based on activity that frequently accompanies them on the Sun, but this is the first direct evidence. Unfortunately, the major advance for […]

2024 YR4, the “city-killer” asteroid that briefly made headlines last year due to a small but non-zero chance that it may hit the Earth, may soon have increased odds of striking our Moon. Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered on December 27, 2024, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Chile. Initial […]

Faced with filthy waterways and a worsening public health crisis, Chicago’s authorities took a radical step to literally reverse the flow of the Chicago River in 1900. Needless to say, the move did not help relations with the city of St Louis, whose residents suddenly found themselves downstream of a river brimming with garbage, human […]

The Sun has just fired off its most powerful solar flare of 2025, causing radio blackouts across half the globe. As the barrage of charged particles makes its way toward Earth, the aurorae borealis – or Northern Lights – could become visible at unusually low latitudes tonight. The rest of this article is behind a […]

Astronomers at the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have reported the first radio detection from interstellar object 3I/ATLAS.  First a recap for anyone who isn’t up to speed with our third interstellar visitor. On July 1, 2025, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System did their job beautifully, detecting an object whizzing through […]

Paleontologists have confirmed their suspicions that Australia once had crocodiles that roamed forests and probably climbed trees, to jump on potential prey. Although evidence for this conclusion has come from several sources, the final piece of the puzzle was provided by an apparently unlikely source: eggshells. Australians are fond of scaring tourists with tales of […]

On July 1, 2025, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) did its job superbly and spotted a sizeable object as it hurtled its way through the Solar System, 670 million kilometers (410 million miles) from the Sun. By studying the object’s trajectory, it was soon confirmed to be an interstellar object, meaning an object […]

There are, in other words, plenty of potential candidates. But a new study presents an alternative contender: the humble bumble. “We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn the difference between […] different durations” of flashing lights, explained Alex Davidson, a PhD student in the Queen Mary University of London’s School of Biological and […]

We all know the senses: there’s sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and the sixth senses A through F. Now, though, there’s a “seventh” on the cards – and it’s spookier than you might expect. It’s the first time that the new sense, called “remote touch”, has been studied in humans – and “it changes our […]

The place with the longest name in the world isn’t exactly a backwater village holding onto an ancient, obscure linguistic tradition. In fact, it’s a booming metropolis of skyscrapers that’s home to over 11 million people and welcomes around 22 million international visitors every year. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]