Deborah Bloomfield

Sometimes where you are born is not where you are meant to be, especially if you are going to be brighter and hotter than anyone else there. Young star cluster R136 is a stellar nursery full of stars but over the last 2 million years it has sent dozens of massive stars flying into interstellar […]

A harmonious oasis of nuanced debate and reason… is sadly not an accurate description of most social media platforms. Let’s face it, things can quickly get very nasty in those comment sections – but why is it like that? A new study explores what the authors call the “confrontation effect”, in which users become highly […]

Hurricane Milton made landfall last night as a Category 3 storm, causing destruction on Florida’s west coast and leaving millions without power.  For a brief time, the intense storm was Category 5, with Fox 35 Orlando meteorologist Noah Bergren describing it as “nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth’s atmosphere over this ocean water can […]

Every now and then, the various robots NASA has placed on Mars find an unusual rock or feature. After all, that is (partly) what they’re there for. These finds can be interesting, like a donut-shaped rock that may not be from the planet; or very interesting, like the incredibly unusual striped rock Perseverance recently found […]

The black hole that was recently spotted consuming a star that got too close has found its next victim, which may be another black hole. Astronomers are looking forward to watching the process in action, and have used what they have already seen to confirm a link between two scientific mysteries.  One of the thrillingly […]

Studying exoplanets is not easy. Despite enormous steps forward in technology, models, and observational tricks, astronomers are still looking at small dots either blocking some starlight or reflecting it while being next to a bright object that easily outshines them. It requires practice, and researchers have decided to use Uranus to get better at it. […]

Having the means to see Earth from space is one of science’s greatest achievements and it’s provided us with all sorts of stunning imagery, including an incredible new time-lapse of the line dividing day and night as Earth progresses through the seasons. Posted to X by ESA Earth Observation, the video is a compilation of […]

With Hurricane Milton making landfall in Florida on Wednesday night, officials have warned that the monstrous storm is set to bring significant change to the state’s coastline. By generating strong winds and changes in pressure over the sea, hurricanes can push large amounts of seawater toward the shore, known as a storm surge. The intense […]

The largest volcano in Washington state has shown a flurry of seismic activity in recent weeks, having previously remained virtually silent for thousands of years. Officials from the US Geological Survey (USGS) are now installing temporary seismic stations around Mount Adams in order to monitor the situation and determine whether the sleepy giant is likely […]

Yesterday, we saw amazing observations of a full halo coronal mass ejection release from the Sun, passing over comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, and continuing straight for Earth. It will slam into our planet in a matter of hours. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are stupendous releases of high-speed plasma from the Sun. They are associated with […]

Germophobes may be horrified, but bathrooms are rich locations for biological diversity, with so many species living side-by-side that most have yet to be recorded. When it comes to the black mold you really should have cleaned off months ago, that can be a health hazard, but a wealth of new discoveries on toothbrushes and […]

For the 170 years that scientists have been aware of Arthropleura, a genus of the biggest arthropods ever known to have existed, there’s been a key question that has remained unanswered: what did their heads look like? Now, thanks to some newly discovered fossils, they’ve finally solved the mystery. Arthropleura was a millipede-like critter that lived […]

Human activity has contributed to a “catastrophic” decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations in just 50 years, according to the WWF’s Living Planet Report. The new report, released every two years, takes a deep look at the state of world’s biodiversity with the help of the Living Planet Index developed by the […]

Over 150 million years ago, a sauropod took a walk through an area that would later become part of Colorado. Now, you can see the evidence it left behind in stunning new drone footage that captures the world’s longest continuous dinosaur trackway. Famed for its wealth of dinosaur fossils, Colorado is already a paleontologist’s dream […]

You can, if the movie Forrest Gump is to be believed, tell a lot about a person by their shoes. Delightfully, according to a new paper, the same is true of elephants – although, since they’re lacking in the shoe department, you’ll have to direct your gaze a little more… noseward. That’s right: an elephant’s […]

Beyond the physics we know exists lurk many possibilities that have yet to be proven, including a fifth force to add to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Our failure to confirm its existence suggests any fifth force is probably fairly weak, but it could still explain some puzzling aspects to the […]

What a week it has been for the Sun and Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). The Sun has released multiple highly energetic flares, including the most powerful this solar cycle, as well as several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – fast eruptions of plasma pushed across interplanetary space. The flares and CMEs have come right at Earth, […]

Even the longest-lived parts of continents don’t survive forever, which is why geologists and paleontologists have so much trouble reconstructing Earth’s first billion years. The reasons for this are still not well understood – however, a study of the forces affecting the North China Craton provides some likely answers. Cratons are the oldest parts of […]

A 16-year-old from the US appears to have become the first person to beat the game of Tetris, clearing the final level and causing it to reset to level 0. Tetris has been around for a while, so you might have assumed it would be complete by now. After all, it’s not like a game […]

We tend to think that poor sleep is something we can just shake off – a couple of early nights and you’ll have caught up, right? But maybe it’s not so simple. New research tracked one woman’s activity for 19 weeks, revealing the impact that daily life could be having on our minds even days […]