Deborah Bloomfield

Researchers have successfully induced lucid dreams involving feelings of compassion and a sense of ego-loss in four participants. The feat was achieved by exposing the quartet to a specially designed virtual reality experience in the hours before bedtime, illustrating the potential of VR to influence subconscious processes and generate lasting psychological changes. “By bridging the […]

Vesna Vulović was a Serbian flight attendant who fell 10,160 meters (33,333 feet) from a crashing plane and, somehow, lived to tell the tale. It’s the longest fall without a parachute ever recorded, according to Guinness World Records, although parts of the story are still shrouded in mystery and intrigue. The incident began on January […]

Have you seen the Barbary lion cubs born at a Czech zoo recently? Besides their size and enviable energy levels, there’s something that clearly sets them apart from their parents: they’ve got spots. It’s not a feature unique to this population of lions in particular – spots can be seen on all young lion cubs, […]

On August 6, 1945, the US dropped the first nuclear bomb on the unsuspecting Japanese city of Hiroshima. This cataclysmic event, as well as the bombing of Nagasaki a few days later, not only compounded Japan’s decision to surrender in the Second World War, but it also marked the start of the nuclear age. It’s […]

Four radioactive wasp nests are causing a buzz at a South Carolina facility tied to nuclear weapons. Thankfully, there’s no threat to the public (and the chances of this turning into a superhero origin story are close to zero). In March 2025, workers found the nests in a restricted area of the Savannah River Site, […]

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We’ve all been there: the movie ends; the lights come up; you shift in your seat, only to find your entire left calf is missing. Or at least, it feels that way – it’s still there when you check, but you can’t feel it, and it’s certainly not doing what you’re telling it. What’s going […]

There’s nothing particle physicists like more than crashing particles together and seeing what comes out of the mess. Such experiments can help us find evidence of particles and processes predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics – such as the Higgs Boson – or allow us to probe the conditions of the early universe, […]

The closest exoplanets to the Solar System are around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. This little star is orbiting two bigger Sun-like stars, which are known as Alpha Centauri A and B. For over a decade, people have proposed possible planets around either, with no confirmation. New observations now make a stronger case for a […]

Over on Reddit, people are discussing whether it is possible to “smell” that somebody else is pregnant, with several users claiming anecdotal evidence that you can smell when somebody has a fetus forming inside them.  “This might sound really weird, but I’m being completely serious and would really like some insight… For some reason, I […]

If size doesn’t matter, then explain this: The Cosmic Horseshoe is a gravitationally lensed system with the foreground galaxy being one of the heaviest in the known universe, hundreds of times our own galaxy. It is so heavy that it warps space-time to such a degree that the light of a background galaxy is distorted […]

Alas, we do not live in Star Trek; the speed of light, as far as we can tell, is an insurmountable limit. This means that even if we wanted to visit the closest star system, we would have to travel for several years. We currently have no spacecraft that can travel at the speed of […]

A Czech zoo has welcomed four Barbary lion cubs, the result of continued efforts to conserve this rare population of big cats after it was driven to extinction in the wild. The cubs were born at Dvůr Králové safari park to mom Khalila and dad Bart, who have previously parented equally adorable little lions back […]

What a time to be alive, when you can pull a tiny computer from your pocket and gaze at a high-resolution panorama of Mars captured by a space-traveling robot. The image is a mosaic of 96 images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover on May 26, 2025, that were carefully pieced together to create this 360° […]

A newly published study by Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) researchers has looked at mysterious “transient events”. Since 2017, the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project has attempted to look for stars and other sources of light that have appeared and disappeared from view or have dimmed unusually over the 20th […]

The remains of what may be an entire family have been discovered in a Neolithic cave in northern Spain, with evidence suggesting that the group was eaten by cannibals. According to researchers, the barbaric act had nothing to do with either famine or religion, but was probably motivated by conflict and a desire to annihilate […]

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., just announced a “coordinated wind-down” of mRNA vaccine development. That includes the termination of 22 research contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and a moratorium on new agreements being initiated. In a statement, Kennedy claimed that the […]

Soaring over the Indian Ocean might sound idyllic, but when you’ve got to catch your supper it becomes a lot trickier. New bird-mounted cameras have offered researchers an insight into how red-footed boobies catch flying fish, and revealed that both birds and fish are on the wing.  Red-footed boobies (Sula sula rubripes) in the Chagos […]

Imagine returning to your home, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, after it had been crushed and crozzled by a violent volcanic eruption. The streets are buried in ash, your house is flattened beneath a shower of boulders, and your favourite bakery is nowhere to be found. Remarkably, there’s now evidence that some people did […]

The Sun is just past its peak of activity for this solar cycle, but that does not mean it is done with its fireworks. A relatively weak flare yesterday has caused a minor radio blackout, and it might lead to some aurorae on Friday as a large wave of plasma has left the Sun, speeding […]