Deborah Bloomfield

From CCTV and smartphones to dashcams and smart doorbells, cameras follow your every step in the 21st century. While the constant threat of ever-watching eyes may be turning us into a self-conscious surveillance society, it does make for some interesting science occasionally. Case in point: a security camera in Myanmar captured something never before seen […]

Join us as we dive into a fascinating ocean mystery: a massive, unidentified object discovered by explorers on the floor of the Baltic Sea. In one (admittedly blurry) sonar image, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Millennium Falcon from above. Most intriguingly, the team that found it in 2011 noted it appeared to rest […]

Humanity has successfully landed probes on Mars and Venus, two of the four rocky planets of the Solar System. While a mission to Mercury, being so close to the Sun and nearly as hot as Venus, is a tricky goal for future operations, if it has a rocky surface, human scientists will find a way […]

We’re often told we need to walk “X number” of steps every day in order to stay healthy, although most of these claims are made by people who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk. With little or no scientific evidence to back up these daily benchmarks, it has until now remained unclear exactly […]

In what is being hailed as a “groundbreaking achievement” for Uruguay and South America, a weight loss drug has successfully completed its Phase I human trials. The drug is the first to have been completely developed in the country, and operates by burning calories by generating creatine-based heat without impacting patients’ appetites. The drug is […]

For five months, a toxic algal bloom off South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula has been killing marine life and making swimming and surfing unsafe. Instead of easing with the coming of winter as was expected, the affected area has expanded, including to the Gulf of St Vincent on which Adelaide sits. Damage has worsened, and volunteers […]

To be clear, we’re not making a crack about math problems “sending you to sleep” or anything. It’s actually much cooler than that: a new study from researchers at the University of Surrey has found that the so-called “two-process model” of sleep – the usual framework through which we understand the phenomenon – can be […]

On September 20, 1977, citizens of northern Europe and Soviet Russia were greeted with an unusual sight in the night sky. Early that morning witnesses in Petrozavodsk, but also as far away as Copenhagen and Helsinki, saw a large glowing light which “hovered over the city in the form of a jellyfish sending down a […]

Is there anyone out there? Anyone who’s ever peered into the deepest parts of the night sky has likely asked themselves this question at least once in their life. And, if they’ve ever considered the sheer size of the universe, then they may have even answered in the affirmative; there must be other life out […]

In what must have been like looking for a needle in a stack of small, wiggly needles, scientists have rediscovered a “lost species” of snake that’s so small, it makes a coin look massive. The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae), the smallest snake in the world, was rediscovered under a rock in central Barbados during an […]

The terror bird. It’s a name that strikes fear, and with good reason. These “super predators” from the Phorusrhacidae were a family of massive carnivorous birds that were among the largest predators of their time. A rare fossil has now revealed a surprising weakness, however, as it suggests that 15 million years ago, one died […]

Anyone using social media at the moment will likely be aware of the increasingly heated debates surrounding migration, identity, and national cohesion. It feels like everywhere you look, people are getting more divided over the question of how white and Christian America should be. But what if this division is really just an illusion? According […]

Male Hawaiian field crickets typically sing to attract a mate. However, some of these males have evolved a genetic mutation, which means they fall silent, unable to chirp, known as flatwing. While this might seem sad, this genetic mutation actually protects them from a parasitoid fly, their deadly enemy that can find a cricket by […]

Moving around on the Earth, as humans so enjoy, is something we all have an instinctive understanding of. In order to move forward, you push against something else. Your feet push against the floor as you walk, your body against the water as you swim, and your rotating car wheels push back against the surface […]

What do zinc, bitter orange, lavender, saffron, and vitamin D all have in common? No, they’re not the ingredients to a bizarre-sounding salad, but they are all products that have been touted as natural antidepressants. The real question is – do any of them actually work? What are natural antidepressants? Natural antidepressants are pretty much what […]

Two exceptionally well preserved reptile skeletons dating back to the Triassic period have totally rewritten our understanding of the evolution of skin appendages such as feathers and hair. Known as Mirasaura grauvogeli – meaning “Grauvogel’s Wonder Reptile” – the strange prehistoric creature appears to have sported a crest of odd accessories on its back, demonstrating that […]

Researchers have been able to heat up a sample of solid gold to over 14 times its melting temperature for a fraction of a second, bypassing a theoretical limit known as the entropy catastrophe. The approach, known as superheating, might lead to a better understanding of how substances change phase at a fundamental level and […]

Attempting to model astronomical systems can often involve supercomputers, but scientists have also looked for alternative analogue systems to model the astronomical systems they are studying. This can involve varying degrees of complexity. In the past, they have simulated black holes in the lab using “quantum tornados” inside superfluid helium, but even old-fashioned water has […]

The regular matter that makes us, planets, stars, and galaxies is about 5 percent of the matter-energy content of the universe. The rest is made of dark matter and dark energy, though we are not sure what they are. There is also uncertainty around the regular matter, since for a long time over one-third of […]

A scholar has recently discovered a previously unknown Sumerian myth inscribed on a long-overlooked 4,400-year-old tablet. Although the story is incomplete, due to the tablet’s fractured nature, there is enough text to indicate an exciting narrative of a cunning fox infiltrating the netherworld in order to rescue the storm god, Ishkur. The tablet, known as […]