Deborah Bloomfield

Some images stay with you forever. For one person, it might be the first time they laid eyes on their child. Another, their spouse waiting at the other end of the aisle. For this writer, it’s that time a frog got launched into the stratosphere by a rocket launch. I don’t mean that literally, of […]

The world’s largest time capsule – located in Seward, Nebraska, and containing over 5,000 items – is set to be opened in under a month’s time. In 1975, Seward local and former store owner Harold Keith Davisson, then a senior citizen, constructed a 45-ton vault on the front lawn of his store. “He wanted his […]

“The female of the species is more deadly than the male”, wrote Rudyard Kipling in the early 20th century, and indeed it was once proposed that female T. rex may have been larger and more terrifying than their opposite sex. However, more recent research has suggested that this probably wasn’t the case, and in fact […]

Goosebumps are one of those things, like the taste of your own spit or those weird noises your belly makes after you eat spicy food, that is so intrinsically part of our bodies you kind of forget how weird it is. But it is, right? You get a bit cold, or creeped out, and your […]

Astronomers using data from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and other observatories around the world have discovered the most energetic explosions to occur since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Black holes, being one of the more annoying space objects, cannot be seen by our observations except when something else interacts with them. […]

You know the situation is bad when someone suggests detonating a nuclear weapon will make things better. That’s the idea proposed by one scientist who believes a controlled nuclear explosion on the seafloor could help reduce atmospheric carbon, lessening the effects of climate change. Climate change is a big deal and is probably one of […]

A bloated submarine volcano on the West Coast of the US is about to blow, and a good snippet of the event is set to be livestreamed straight to your screen.  The Axial Seamount is an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean around 480 kilometers (300 miles) from Oregon’s beaches. The submerged feature towers at […]

Celiac disease affects millions of people worldwide and yet popular understanding of it is often riddled with myths and misconceptions – so let’s clear some of them up. 1. It’s “just” an allergy/intolerance/someone being fussy First things first, both allergies and intolerances aren’t to be taken lightly; the latter might not be life-threatening, but they […]

On June 5, the private Japanese company ispace will attempt to land its Resilience spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, after launching from Earth on January 15, and you can watch it happen. The team expects the lander to make touchdown at around 3:17 pm EDT (7:17 pm UTC), though this could be subject […]

Is the modern world, with its sprawling cities, hyperconnectivity, and fast-paced demands, a healthy place to live? Do you feel like it promotes a sense of wellness in its citizens, or is it more likely to produce “unwellness”? And if the answer to these two questions is negative, what do you think is a good […]

A new artificial intelligence (AI) model has helped researchers determine the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls, revealing that some of these manuscripts are considerably older than previously thought. Most significantly, it now appears that a few of the ancient documents may even have been written by the very people who composed the Bible. Discovered […]

While we all wish our pets would live forever, only a few animals have extraordinarily long life spans, so we love to celebrate them. There are tortoise birthday parties, of course, but today, let’s take a journey into the world of some of the longest-living cats – including Creme Puff, the oldest cat to have […]

There is a sleeping giant off the coast of the Pacific Northwest that could cause chaos to North America when it eventually wakes up. Known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone, this 1,130-kilometer-long (700-mile-long) fault line extends from around Cape Mendocino in California up to near Vancouver Island, Canada. Although it has been quiet for centuries, […]

For the first time, solar astronomers have been able to observe striations on the surface of the Sun at an unprecedented resolution. Thanks to the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located in Hawai’i, astronomers have snapped images of these “magnetic curtains” at a scale of 20 kilometers (12.4 miles). We had never before seen details […]

The world’s groundwater is disappearing at a rate so great as to knock the Earth off its axis. Like any global threat, though, while we may all be affected by the problem, some places are feeling it more than others – and this time, it’s the southwest US that’s feeling the heat. “The Colorado River […]

A team of international scientists recently returned from a 35-day expedition to explore the waters of the South Sandwich Islands, one of the most remote island chains in the world, and the ocean oddities to be found there. Far beneath the water’s surface, they discovered thriving polar ecosystems in some of the coldest and most […]

Humans have been scooping copper out of the Morenci Mine in Arizona for over 150 years, leaving behind a city-sized terrain of vast pits. But the story of Morenci isn’t just about lifeless geology – this land has also been shaped by powerful human struggles, from fiery labor disputes to the growing green revolution.  The […]

The most exciting possible avenue for physics beyond the standard model of particle physics has been, for years, the discrepancy in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. After refinement in the theory and high-precision experiments, scientists have finally announced that the standard model of particle physics continues to be correct. The experimental results are […]

A surprising number of people, if Internet forums are anything to go by, are of the belief that we are living inside a simulation. The idea, made popular by films like The Matrix, is pretty simple to explain. Instead of being in “base reality”, we are simulated beings living in a simulated world created by […]

President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order that has the stated goal of restoring trust in science – but critics are claiming the order will allow the administration to dictate what science can be done and shared, limiting freedom of research across the United States. In section 7 of the executive order, the […]