Deborah Bloomfield

This week on Break It Down: A great big explosion in space is the most energetic since the Big Bang, AI reveals the Dead Sea Scrolls could share the same authors as the Bible, it looks like the Milky Way and Andromeda will not collide in 5 billion years after all, pregnant female mice with […]

It’s easy to lose sight of your place in the universe when you’re caught up in bills, breakups, and bumper-to-bumper traffic, but this NASA image offers a gentle reminder: cut the nonsense, you’re riding on a breathtaking, ocean-covered rock hurtling through the vastness of space. Titled The Day the Earth Smiled, the image shows Saturn’s […]

Bubbles are surprisingly important to a wide range of cetaceans. Different species use them for play, to help capture prey, and even in aggressive encounters. Now, researchers are looking at bubble rings made by humpback whales to learn more about why the species makes such a specific shape.  Humpback whales have a wide range of […]

With remnants of their DNA living on in us, the lives of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and humans (Homo sapiens) are intrinsically intertwined – but exactly how long were the lives of our extinct relatives? It’s not like birth and death certificates were a thing 40,000 years ago, so how can we figure it out? According […]

Why are dice cubes? Okay, nerds, yes, some are tetrahedra, or dodecahedra, or icosahedra, or whatever else your TTRPG calls for – but the point is, they’re all regular, symmetrical, perfectly balanced… in a word: boring. Why is that? The obvious answer is “to make them fair”. Ever since we figured out that dice obey […]

It is arguable that the discovery of fire is one of the most important developments in the history of our species, if not the most important one. Our mastery over this elemental force has shaped so much of our world, allowing us to prepare food, extend daylight hours, warm homes in the cold, and manufacture […]

If aliens really are out there, interacting with them is going to be difficult. It’s not that they’ll just speak a different language – it’s more that the very building blocks of communication themselves will probably be different. The sounds; the relationships between ideas; heck, the conceptual basis of words themselves – without a real-life […]

Want to watch a meteor shower, but your evenings usually involve conking out on the sofa by 9 pm? We come bearing great news – it’s the peak of the Arietids this weekend, the most active daytime meteor shower of the year. When can I watch the Arietids? We say daytime – most of the […]

The final resting place of HMS Endeavour – the first European ship to reach the east coast of Australia – has been confirmed by the Australian National Maritime Museum. In a new report, 26 years of historical and archaeological research has concluded that the shipwreck is located at a site called RI 2394, located on […]

At some point in our future, if sci-fi has any say in it, humanity will venture into space to mine asteroids for precious metals to bring back to Earth for our benefit/to help fight our robot overlords (delete as applicable). But according to a new study, we could make things a lot easier for ourselves […]

Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, summiting at an air-thinning 8,848 meters (29,029 feet). It’s a place few of us will ever stand upon, and even fewer still attempt to get down any other way than scrambling on your feet. French snowboarder and mountaineer Marco Siffredi had a different idea. In 2001, Siffredi […]

Dozens of the busiest cities in the US are sinking into the ground. A bunch of them are subsiding by a few millimeters every single year, with certain localized spots sinking to a degree of several centimeters. The culprit is water – or rather, the removal of it. Dense urban areas, packed full of humans, […]

Ever wondered what a nearly 200-year-old condom might look like? Probably not, but thanks to a rare specimen now on display at a museum in Amsterdam, you’re about to find out anyway. Curators from the Rijksmuseum were at an auction six months ago when they spotted an unusual lot – a condom dating all the […]

The animal world is full of an impressive array of sounds, from singing whales, to those capable of mimicking humans. One species in particular is named after the noise it makes – but have you ever stopped to consider how a rattlesnake’s rattle actually works? First of all, rattlesnakes are venomous reptiles with a segmented […]

Word of a curious worm phenomenon has spread among scientists over the years. Words like, “they’re living in giant towers, Jim.” An understandably perplexing concept, but one that we can now confirm thanks to the first-ever recordings of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans forming towers in nature. Turns out, there’s a lot more to them […]

A new study has reported its findings from a rather curious experiment: getting a bunch of chimpanzees to watch a disembodied android head yawning. The results revealed that the head, both alien and familiar in its appearance, had the capacity to make them yawn and even start gathering bedding materials. The findings reveal new insights […]

Researchers have just shown that pregnant female mice with low iron levels can lead to the development of male embryos that develop ovaries, regardless of their genetics. This discovery could have significant implications for our understanding of sex determination, and it’s thought to be the first time environmental factors have been documented to influence the […]

In the Everglades of Florida, a decapitated Burmese python is offering a glimmer of hope for the ecosystem. A victorious bobcat was later spotted snooping around the body of the defeated snake, suggesting that the native wildlife is able to take a stand against the invasive species. Burmese pythons, as their name suggests, are not […]

A team of physicists have proposed a new cosmological model – dubbed the “black hole universe” – that suggests that our universe did not begin at the Big Bang. For a long time the universe was assumed to be static, a potentially infinite pool of space that is neither expanding nor contracting. But during the […]

Physicists have created a “nano-violin” so small that it could fit within the width of a human hair. This is not only good news for anyone feeling sorry for themselves – it also demonstrates the capabilities of a new nanolithography system that allows researchers to build and study nanoscale structures. It will help researchers identify […]