Deborah Bloomfield

On Monday (June 23), Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit from the Space Launch Complex at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The dedicated rideshare mission contained 70 payloads, including a few unusual and notable experiments, as well as human remains. Unfortunately for researchers and families of the deceased, the […]

Mercury is an odd little planet. The closest world to the Sun has some extreme surface structures, steep hills and cliffs, which have long been suspected to be the effect of the planet’s interior cooling and shrinking. However, certain features cannot be explained by shrinking alone, and a team of researchers suspects that the Sun’s […]

Who owns the Moon? If you ask a hippy or a space lawyer, the answer is pretty clear: nobody. But according to Dennis Hope, the answer is “Dennis Hope” and “anyone Dennis Hope sells the Moon to”. The latter category, according to Hope, includes presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. In 1967, […]

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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially unveiled its first images, and truly, it is going to be as revolutionary as people expect it to be. Thanks to its incredible eye on the cosmos, which is the largest digital camera in the world, the images are absolutely breathtaking – and we can’t even share the […]

An incredibly rare genetic mutation has given rise to a brand new blood type which is currently thought to exist in just one person. Known as “Gwada negative”, the exceptional blood group was identified earlier this month in a French woman from the island of Guadeloupe, solving a mystery that had puzzled doctors since 2011, […]

What words spring to mind when you think of the common garden snail? Slow? Slimy? Venomous? You might be raising your eyebrows at that last one, but according to a new study, humble garden snails are just one of a slew of new venomous animals under a fresh definition of the concept. The radical redefinition […]

Animals using tools is always a pretty cool facet of their behavior, from monkeys cracking nuts to elephants sabotaging their mates’ showers. Now thanks to some pretty nifty drone footage, researchers have revealed a new kind of tool use in orcas, and it might just be the latest wellness trend to take over. Orcas are […]

There are lots of situations where getting a look at the human brain can be very helpful. Unfortunately, our heads are famously opaque, so decades of research and development have gone into finding ways to break through this barrier and catch a glimpse of the workings underneath. A recent study has taken this one step […]

A letter from renowned physicist Albert Einstein outlining his own role in the development of the atomic bomb and his opposition to war has been put up for auction, with a guide price of between $100,000 and $150,000. In early 1939, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann announced a discovery that would change the […]

Animals can work cooperatively in groups all the time to impress females, catch prey, or even groom each other. Species working with another species outside of their own is a lot more unusual, but this appeared to be what a local conservationist group in Western Australia recorded recently.  Australia’s Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury recorded […]

Welcome to a new era in visual astronomy, and it is down to the incredible camera at the heart of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The instrument is the largest digital camera in the world, and thanks to the incredible pictures and just-released videos, you can tell that this is indeed the case. This morning, […]

What does a cat look like? You’ve probably got a pretty good idea: big teeth, murder mittens, a range of facial expressions that make for excellent memes. Now imagine all of that, but with a hefty dose of mustelid thrown in, and you’ve got yourself one of the weirdest-looking cats out there – the jaguarundi. […]

A medievalist and cultural historian from the University of Liverpool has uncovered the history of the “mermaids of Staithes”, finding the legend of mermaids leaving a curse on an old English fishing village is likely centuries older than we thought. Great Britain, being entirely surrounded by water and having a tendency to see monsters in […]

The fungus Aspergillus flavus produces a class of molecules that have strong potential as future anti-leukemia drugs, although they have yet to be tried in living organisms. Several of the archaeologists, and their funders, who first opened Tutankhamun’s tomb in the 1920s died relatively soon afterwards. Given that the ancient Egyptians were less than keen […]

A new theory of the fabric of the universe has proposed that time has three dimensions. Moreover, this model leads to the conclusion that these three time dimensions are the true underlying feature of the universe, and the dimensions collectively known as space are just a byproduct, one might even say an offshoot. Currently this […]

Archaeologists in London have reconstructed ancient Roman frescoes that have not been seen for over 1,800 years. The work involved reassembling thousands of fragments that were once abandoned in a pit after the original building was demolished around 200 CE. The reconstruction work was performed by Han Li, the Senior Building Material Specialist at the […]

The dark dreams that haunt your nights may be leaving a deeper imprint on your life. Scientists at the UK Dementia Research Institute and Imperial College London analyzed data from 183,012 adults aged 26 to 86, as well as 2,429 children aged 8 to 10, collected from six long-term health studies. At the start of […]

By the end of the next 10 years, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is aiming to test the DNA of every baby born, as part of plans to better predict and prevent disease and reduce pressure on healthcare services. Babies born in the UK already receive the newborn blood spot test (also called the […]

Snow is beautiful, but also powerful and destructive – and, if we’re honest, a bit confusing. For something made entirely of water, it can come in many forms: light and fluffy, sticky and heavy, shaped like a perfect snowflake, or falling in needle-like flecks. Its consistency changes a lot, but so does its color, which […]