Deborah Bloomfield

It is obviously unfair that while we wait for Betelgeuse to go supernova (it won’t anytime soon), the good people living during the Early Modern Period had not just one, but two supernovae visible in the night sky: one in 1572 and one in 1604. The explosive death of a star, from a safe distance, […]

Our planet is a water world. Around 71 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by sea – and this view of the world really hits that home.  The image from Google Earth shows the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the largest and deepest ocean on Earth with a total area of over 155 million square kilometers […]

There’s been a murder most foul – or, should we say, most marine-mammalian – in North Carolina: a bottlenose dolphin, found dead and decapitated last month on the state’s Lea-Hutaff Island. Worse still? It was sick – and whoever took the head may be at risk.  A headless dolphin, lying dead on the shore, makes […]

Solar storms can be scary. They have the ability to disrupt our tech, cause blackouts, and even impact us directly. Still, nothing directly observed nor in living memory might quite compare with new findings from researchers – a peak of radiation, consistent with an extreme solar particle event (ESPE) more intense than anything previously known […]

The photograph of the Earth taken from lunar orbit, sometimes known as “Earthrise”, is one of the most famous ever taken. However, while its beauty is widely agreed on, it gives little sense of scale, let alone brightness. So how bright did the Moon look to the Apollo astronauts? Is there anything useful future lunar […]

Humans are desperately in need of new antibiotics, so you can imagine the surprise when a team of scientists uncovered a new molecule wielding formidable antibiotic power against superbugs inside a Chinese mine. The star of the story is saarvienin A, a brand-new glycopeptide antibiotic produced by an unusual strain of Amycolatopsis, a genus of […]

An infant with a life-threatening and incurable genetic disease has become the first human to successfully receive a personalized gene editing therapy. This is a massive achievement and could represent a platform for the rapid development of treatments for other genetic diseases. The child was diagnosed with carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) deficiency shortly after […]

Doctors in Montana will now be allowed to recommend and sell treatments not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), thanks to a new bill that just passed in the state. Once it’s signed into law by the governor, any drug produced in the state will be able to be sold after going through […]

Homo sapiens are incredible things. In humanity’s longest prehistoric migration, groups of daring people walked over 20,000 kilometres (12,427 miles) from North Asia across to North America and down to the southernmost tip of South America. In a new study, scientists have traced this momentous journey using  DNA sequence data from 1,537 people from 139 […]

A startup high-speed flight company from Houston, Texas, has successfully tested its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) ultimately aimed at allowing travel at four to six times the speed of sound taking off from a conventional runway. RDRE has been talked about as an alternative propulsion mechanism since the 1980s, providing theoretical advantages over traditional […]

Forty years ago today, a trio of UK scientists reported that something strange and very unexpected was occurring over Antarctica. They didn’t know it at the time, but they had “accidentally” (their words, not ours) made one of the greatest geophysical discoveries of the 20th century and started one of the most important scientific stories […]

On the border of two South American countries, miners have discovered a hoard of valuable metals that’s been described as “one of the world’s largest copper, gold, and silver resources.” A new survey estimates that the Vicuña Mineral Resource in the San Juan Province in Argentina and the Atacama Region of Chile contains up to […]

When new rules or measures are introduced, they often spark resistance in people who feel like their personal freedoms are being eroded. This type of resistance, referred to as reactance, can be so severe that it actually discourages policymakers from making important decisions, especially concerning delicate subjects. However, new research suggests reactance is short-lived and […]

Richmond, a small port city in California’s Bay Area, is currently at the center of a bizarre phenomenon that’s baffling both residents and officials alike: an unexplained spate of exploding birds. First reported by ABC7 News, residents told the outlet that they first noticed birds turning up dead several months ago, and have since witnessed […]

Brain fog has become one of the most familiar, and most feared, symptoms associated with long COVID. In a new study, scientists say they’ve identified two biomarkers that are altered in people with long COVID compared with people who recovered fully from the infection, indicating that there may be more we can do to identify […]

An experiment has visualized a prediction about objects traveling at the speed of light known as the Penrose-Terrell Effect, first made over 60 years ago. When objects approach the speed of light (let’s call it a spaceship, for ease) a number of strange things take place. According to our best classical model of the universe, […]

Orange cat lovers rejoice! Scientists might not be convinced that “orange behavior” is really a thing, but after over a century of suspicion, they’ve finally pinpointed the genetic mutation that makes our favorite Garfield-lookalikes so delightfully ginger. Researchers already had a rough idea of where in the cat genome to look: the X chromosome. That’s […]

The film Limitless introduced many to the concept of nootropics: pop a pill and, just like magic, your brain can suddenly work unimaginably quickly and efficiently. It’s an enticing idea that such a drug could exist in real life – and now, some are claiming that it does, although perhaps not quite to the same […]

You might have heard of the three-body problem, how there is no exact solution to predicting the behavior of three interacting gravitational celestial bodies under Newton’s laws. The best you can do is to have solutions for specific cases or work with numerical solutions and approximations. But if you are working in general relativity, not […]

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is the only other world in the Solar System with rivers, lakes, and seas on its surface. They are not made of water, as it is far too cold there, but hydrocarbons, mostly methane. Earth has a water cycle that moves the liquid around between the ground and the […]