Deborah Bloomfield

The flu seasons of 2020 and 2021 were mild, mostly thanks to measures people took against COVID, such as wearing masks, social distancing and using copious amounts of hand gel. 2022, however, looks like a whole different kettle of fish. The southern hemisphere – where flu season starts – has been hit hard. Australia, for […]

Upon opening to an excited crowd, a $1.5 million floating home – complete with a jacuzzi, panoramic windows, and an impressive exterior – proved a resounding success for multiple days as visitors toured inside. However, hopes for smooth sailing quickly met a disappointing end as the high-end home began leaning, ending up partially submerged and […]

Underwater excavations just off the coast of Belize have revealed how the Maya civilization manufactured salt, the much-needed commodity that kept the empire rolling. Like any underwater archaeology, the new research is a reminder of how the Earth’s lakes, rivers, and oceans may still hide many vital insights into how humans once lived. The discovery […]

Being a new parent is exhausting. It’s hardly news – but if you haven’t gone through it yourself, it might be difficult to appreciate just how demanding a brand-new baby can be. They don’t have a circadian rhythm, so forget about sleeping through the night; they wake up every few hours at random intervals, wanting […]

Sixty six million years ago, sea monsters really existed. They were mosasaurs, huge marine lizards that lived at the same time as the last dinosaurs. Growing up to 12 metres long, mosasaurs looked like a Komodo dragon with flippers and a shark-like tail. They were also wildly diverse, evolving dozens of species that filled different […]

Dying of “old age”… it certainly is a head-scratcher, and it can make people curious as to what actually is the cause of a person’s death. This has become apparent with the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II, as it was announced that “old age” was the cause of death on her death certificate. But […]

Italian astronaut and current commander of the International Space Station (ISS), Samantha Cristoforetti, has brought cosplay to literal new heights during her tenure on the space station by dressing up as various sci-fi heroines. She also carries out incredible work in science communication, like sharing how CPR is done in space or explaining menstruation in […]

Tardigrades are famed for their ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions, and new research reveals the secret to the creatures’ incredible powers of endurance. When frozen, the so-called water bears enter a state of “cryobiosis” and stop aging entirely until they are thawed. Such a finding builds upon previous research which showed that tardigrades undergo […]

Faint but significant magnetic field changes have been detected days before Californian earthquakes. It’s not quite the holy grail of seismology, but it could illuminate the path – if the work stands up to further testing, it could allow warnings that could greatly reduce lives lost. The researchers who found the signal acknowledge it’s not […]

In October last year, William Shatner – like his character in Star Trek and the protagonist in his definitive version of Elton John’s Rocket Man – went to space. On the ground after landing, his mood seemed different to the others celebrating around him. He appeared to be trying to talk through his thoughts on […]

Gaming is a great way to challenge your brain and boost your creativity, but it can be costly. That’s why you need to stack up a great deal to ensure you can game for the next 3 years and not have to worry about costly memberships or or limited game access. And, thanks to our […]

The Sun appears committed to being a lot more active during this solar cycle compared to the previous one. We’ve definitely had an uptick in flares, filaments, and coronal mass ejections and we are still a couple of years away from the expected solar maximum. Just a couple of days ago, the Sun released a […]

As any video of a large constrictor chowing down on an impossibly large prey will tell you, snakes have absolutely massive mouths. A recent study set out to determine just how gaping these ginormous food holes really are. The study investigated the potential gape size in relation to body proportion for Burmese pythons and found […]

Outdoor music festivals — events that are no stranger to illicit substance use and public urination — could be responsible for contaminating local rivers with recreational drugs and messing with the lifecycle of endangered eels, according to research.  Scientists at Bangor University in Wales collected water from the Whitelake River in Somerset following the UK’s […]

The human body is a mind-bogglingly amazing thing… most of the time. Like any piece of kit, it has a few glitches: there’s that area in the middle-distance that our eyes just blank on, leaving our brains to try to fill it in with a best guess; our backs, and ankles, which were never fit […]

Since the inception of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, a question has been at the forefront: what happens if we do find a signal from an alien intelligence? Preliminary protocols have been put in place but discussions still rage on exactly how this discovery would impact humans. In 2020, a paper by Kenneth […]

Lake Retba has lost its vibrant pink hue this wet season. Before and after satellite images from NASA Earth Observatory show how the waters of the rosy lake have turned a more typical blue-green following a downpour of torrential rain. The lake can be found in Senegal, West Africa. It owes its coloration to single-celled […]

Despite the presence of a spacecraft on the spot, some investigations of Jupiter’s moons are still best done from Earth. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has been used to study the NaCl (table salt) and KCl gases in the atmosphere of Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s four big moons. The temperature of the gases, […]