Deborah Bloomfield

This week on Break It Down: the Sun has entered its solar maximum bringing new auroras and geomagnetic storms, a chance find of a thylacine head in a jar could be the next step in the de-extinction of the species, microplastics have been discovered in the breath of wild dolphins for the first time, why […]

Eclipses are not exclusive to our planet. While the Moon certainly makes it spectacular, often covering the Sun completely (at least for the next 600 million years), the other natural satellites in the Solar System cast their shadows too. And on Mars, humanity is lucky to have two working robots and two moons – multiple […]

From time to time, every few hundred thousand years or so, the Earth’s magnetic poles have been known to “flip” – but why? And what does this mean for us as a species? What is a magnetic pole reversal? During a pole reversal, Earth’s magnetic poles swap locations. Essentially, the north pole is transformed into […]

Ovulation – it’s the point at which an egg cell is mature enough that it’s ready to leave its cozy home inside a fluid-filled sac within an ovary. That’s all there is to it, right? Wrong. In fact, thanks to new live imaging techniques, researchers have now showcased the process in previously unseen detail. Much […]

Throughout October early risers get to see more meteors than usual, thanks to several showers, particularly the Orionids. The Orionids are one of the longer meteor showers, being seen from October 2 to November 7; but like all showers they have a peak when the sky show is best, and that’s usually on October 21 […]

With a depth of 592 meters (1,943 feet), Crater Lake in Oregon is the deepest lake in the United States. It’s so deep that a giant could stack six Statues of Liberty on top of the other within the lake and it still wouldn’t breach the surface. As its name suggests, Crater Lake is a […]

The Antonov An-225 Mriya was the biggest plane to ever take to the skies. Unfortunately, the colossal aircraft is no longer with us as it was destroyed during the open stages of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. Often known simply as Mriya, which means “dream” or “inspiration” in Ukrainian, the plane had a length of 84 […]

Toxic molecules might be extremely common in both tap and bottled water in many places around the world. Analysis of drinking water from 15 countries shows the presence of Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in over 99 percent of sampled bottled water from Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. PFOA and PFOS are […]

In September 2022, NASA’s DART mission did something that seemed only possible in science fiction or mythology: It moved a celestial body. Asteroid Dimorphos, the moon of the much larger asteroid Didymos, was hit with such strength by the spacecraft that it altered its orbit. Now it’s the turn of Hera, a follow-up mission by […]

Relics of the distant past, as well as recent tragedies, dwell within the cerulean depths of the Great Blue Hole in Belize. The Great Blue Hole is a large marine sinkhole in the Caribbean Sea, some 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the coast of Belize. With a diameter of 318 meters (1,043 feet) and a […]

The concept of singularity, the moment when machines become smarter than humans, has been discussed and debated for decades. But as the development of machine learning algorithms has brought forth software that can beat the Turing test easily, the question has become more pressing. How far away are we from an artificial general intelligence (AGI) and […]

Indulge us for a minute: if you’ve got your phone to hand, pick it up and take a selfie. Which way did you turn your head? Results of psychology research indicate that it’s likely you chose to show off your left cheek, but you probably don’t realize you’re doing it. This is an example of […]

A new preprint study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, has suggested that playing video games is associated with better cognitive abilities, but does not appear to affect measures of mental health; while exercise is associated with better measures of mental health but not cognitive ability. Over the last decade, various studies on preventative medicine […]

A team of physicists say they have created the first coherent picture of atomic nuclei from their composite particles, quarks and gluons. The 20th century was a pretty busy hundred years for particle physics. At the beginning of the century, it was believed by physicists that atoms were made up of protons and electrons. This […]

There is a 60 percent chance that a La Niña event may develop this year, which could last until March 2025. La Niña is part of a climate cycle that causes extreme weather shifts across the world, with its effects varying from place to place. It is the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation that […]

Around 11,766 square kilometers (4,543 square miles) of ocean off the coast of Central California has now officially become the United States’ latest national marine sanctuary. Not only is the new protected area the third biggest of its kind in the country, but it’s also the first that will be led in partnership with Indigenous […]

Three new studies have revealed the common origin of most of the meteorites that hit Earth, linking them to collisions in the relatively recent past. Though the Earth doesn’t make a fuss about it, every day it is bombarded with around 44,000 kilograms (48.5 tons) of meteoric material. Most of it burns up harmlessly in […]

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is fading fast, but strange as it may seem, the best time to see it is probably still to come. Don’t wait too long, however; miss it over the next fortnight and it won’t come around for another 80,000 years. The comet officially known as C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is setting later in the […]

Microplastics seem to be everywhere in 2024, with new studies revealing the tiny contaminants in human brains, penises, and even human placentas. Now, new research has looked at the impact of microplastics on free-ranging dolphins in the USA and has found that even these intelligent cetaceans are not able to escape, with their breath found […]

Ask most people getting on in years, and they will tell you that time seems to move more quickly as you slowly run out of it. Those summers that used to last forever or even drag on seem to fly by in seconds, and the years don’t seem to last as long as they used […]