Deborah Bloomfield

Physicists may say time is the universal constant, but the rest of us know the truth: time is about as far from “constant” as it’s possible to be. Eight hours of sleep can pass in a wink, for example. Spend an hour playing your favorite game, and you’ll be astonished when it’s over; ten minutes […]

Salmon live absolutely wild lives. An unfortunate portion will end up in the jaws of a bear or sliced up in a sushi restaurant, but many will spend their existence embarking on one of the most ambitious animal migrations in the natural world. This is because they are anadromous. Anadromous fish are those that migrate […]

In Albury, Surrey, England, there is a church that you are not allowed to enter. Not yet, anyway. Built in 1839, the church is not due to be reopened until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The church was commissioned by Henry Drummond, a biologist, member of parliament, and evangelist of the Catholic Apostolic Church. […]

In terms of ancient, indecipherable books, no manuscript matches the sheer mystery of the Voynich manuscript. This ancient text, filled with strange and fantastical illustrations of unidentified plants and odd astrological symbols, has defied explanation for centuries. But it has also always defied translation from anybody who has attempted to decode it. “Research on the […]

All good things, they say, must come to an end – and like woolly mammoths, Tasmanian tigers, and the CW’s Supernatural, one day, humanity’s time will run out for good.  In fact, much as we hate to think about it, eventually, everything on Earth will end. But when will that be? Well, believe it or […]

In 2013, a camera trap in Quang Nam province, Vietnam, snapped a photo of a rare and elusive animal. Known as the Asian unicorn, it lives in forests across Vietnam and Laos. At least, we think it does, but nobody’s seen one since. The Asian unicorn (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) or saola is up there as one […]

The world’s oldest wooden spears were probably made by Neanderthals around 200,000 years ago and used to annihilate entire families of wild horses, according to a new study. First discovered at the world-famous site of Schöningen in Germany in 1994, the iconic weapons were once thought to have been 400,000 years old, yet fresh analysis […]

When you think about Neanderthals, “master crafters” probably isn’t the term that comes to mind. But our ancestral cousins are nothing if not surprising – and, according to a new study out of the University of Wollongong, their ability to finely hone stone tools is just one of many things we’ve got wrong. Go back […]

The Parthenon is probably one of the most iconic examples of Greek architecture. This ancient temple, once dedicated to the goddess Athena, sits atop the hill of the Acropolis at Athens and has mystified scholars and tourists alike for centuries. Today, visitors will see the bones of this ruined temple, but in its day it […]

Symmetry is very important in nature, as it underlies conservation laws. So, when symmetry is broken, there is always something exciting to be found. Researchers have now employed a new microscopy technique to study how symmetry breaks in a special material that was not previously known to have such properties. This particular symmetry break is […]

Critically endangered species often exist in small fragmented populations. These can be separated by oceans or mountain ranges, or even just distance. One of the world’s rarest reptiles, the Belalanda chameleon, exists in an area of just 4 square kilometers (1.5 square miles). The Belalanda chameleon (Furcifer belalandaensis) is endemic to Madagascar but almost all […]

Of all the major branches of the tree of life, amphibians are probably in the most trouble today. One of the first signs that something has gone wrong with an ecosystem is when the frog calls vanish. And yet somehow they made it through not only the global catastrophe that was the asteroid impact that […]

A man from Cape Coral, Florida, has been gored by a bison in Yellowstone National Park. The 47-year-old was injured by the animal after he approached too close to it. Thankfully, he only sustained minor injuries from the encounter and has been treated by emergency medical personnel. Bison have lived in Yellowstone National Park since […]

A new study has borrowed a few tricks from palaeontological science to estimate whether or not the Rancor from Star Wars could really have chomped a femur in half. It found that, actually, yes – the Rancor’s bite comes in at a bone-crushing force of 44,000 Newtons, which about puts it on par with a […]

The incredible buzz of cicadas has been wielded by science like never before as a team working at the University of Tsukuba in Japan has found a way of stimulating the insects so that they performed Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Using electrodes comparable to human muscle-toning devices, the cyborg speakers buzzed their hearts out to […]

Over 100 scientists and conservationists have come together to compile a report on the 25 most endangered primate species in the world, and the conservation action points needed to improve their current bleak outlook.  The report began in 2000 and has been updated each year since to reflect the world’s most critically endangered primate species. […]

There are a lot of asteroids around us this weekend, and the biggest of them all is known as asteroid 612356 (2002 JX8). As space rocks go it is a very dangerous one, because it would cause widespread devastation if it were to hit. Luckily, it flew by farther out than the Moon, so we […]

Losing weight is, for most of us, both painful and difficult to the point of impossibility. It’s either an exercise in self-denial, counting calories or hours until your regimen says you can eat again, or else it’s a laundry-list of side effects from some drug or supplement that you’re potentially tied to for life. Wouldn’t […]

A fast-moving Antarctic glacier has been observed by satellites to be stealing ice from a neighbor. Glaciologists were aware this could occur, but thought it took centuries or millennia. Instead, they have spotted the process taking place in just 18 years. As well as being a likely consequence of global heating, the event offers an […]

Researchers behind a new study have concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic was sparked by wildlife trade in China, similar to the circumstances that led to the SARS outbreak in 2002. The results undermine the widely circulated (and much contested) view that the virus was manufactured in a lab. The analysis shows that the ancestor of […]