Deborah Bloomfield

In what must have been like looking for a needle in a stack of small, wiggly needles, scientists have rediscovered a “lost species” of snake that’s so small, it makes a coin look massive. The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae), the smallest snake in the world, was rediscovered under a rock in central Barbados during an […]

The terror bird. It’s a name that strikes fear, and with good reason. These “super predators” from the Phorusrhacidae were a family of massive carnivorous birds that were among the largest predators of their time. A rare fossil has now revealed a surprising weakness, however, as it suggests that 15 million years ago, one died […]

Anyone using social media at the moment will likely be aware of the increasingly heated debates surrounding migration, identity, and national cohesion. It feels like everywhere you look, people are getting more divided over the question of how white and Christian America should be. But what if this division is really just an illusion? According […]

Male Hawaiian field crickets typically sing to attract a mate. However, some of these males have evolved a genetic mutation, which means they fall silent, unable to chirp, known as flatwing. While this might seem sad, this genetic mutation actually protects them from a parasitoid fly, their deadly enemy that can find a cricket by […]

Moving around on the Earth, as humans so enjoy, is something we all have an instinctive understanding of. In order to move forward, you push against something else. Your feet push against the floor as you walk, your body against the water as you swim, and your rotating car wheels push back against the surface […]

What do zinc, bitter orange, lavender, saffron, and vitamin D all have in common? No, they’re not the ingredients to a bizarre-sounding salad, but they are all products that have been touted as natural antidepressants. The real question is – do any of them actually work? What are natural antidepressants? Natural antidepressants are pretty much what […]

Two exceptionally well preserved reptile skeletons dating back to the Triassic period have totally rewritten our understanding of the evolution of skin appendages such as feathers and hair. Known as Mirasaura grauvogeli – meaning “Grauvogel’s Wonder Reptile” – the strange prehistoric creature appears to have sported a crest of odd accessories on its back, demonstrating that […]

Researchers have been able to heat up a sample of solid gold to over 14 times its melting temperature for a fraction of a second, bypassing a theoretical limit known as the entropy catastrophe. The approach, known as superheating, might lead to a better understanding of how substances change phase at a fundamental level and […]

Attempting to model astronomical systems can often involve supercomputers, but scientists have also looked for alternative analogue systems to model the astronomical systems they are studying. This can involve varying degrees of complexity. In the past, they have simulated black holes in the lab using “quantum tornados” inside superfluid helium, but even old-fashioned water has […]

The regular matter that makes us, planets, stars, and galaxies is about 5 percent of the matter-energy content of the universe. The rest is made of dark matter and dark energy, though we are not sure what they are. There is also uncertainty around the regular matter, since for a long time over one-third of […]

A scholar has recently discovered a previously unknown Sumerian myth inscribed on a long-overlooked 4,400-year-old tablet. Although the story is incomplete, due to the tablet’s fractured nature, there is enough text to indicate an exciting narrative of a cunning fox infiltrating the netherworld in order to rescue the storm god, Ishkur. The tablet, known as […]

If you noticed the sky suddenly turn a vivid green, it could be nature’s way of telling you to buckle down and find shelter.  A greenish sky is often associated with incoming tornadoes, and while that belief holds some truth, it’s not quite that simple.  Meteorologists note that a green hue usually signals that storm […]

Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana is no ordinary lake. If it looks a little bit out of place in the surrounding landscape, that’s because it is. It is the only natural lake in the country, formed just over 1 million years ago when a meteorite from outer space crashed into the rainforest, leaving behind a crater […]

A new study has concluded that Earth’s mini-moons may not have come from the asteroid belt as we once thought, but a source far closer to home. According to the team, Earth likely has around 6.5 minimoons captured at any one time. Mini-moons are small asteroids or comets that can become captured by a planet’s […]

For some of us more than others, waking up in the morning is a special kind of torture. Your alarm blares its anthem into your head; the sunlight blasts in at you through the window; you try in vain to burrow back down into your bedcovers but alas, your boss, or kids, or partner, or, […]

Leonardo da Vinci was, by any metric, a genius – but he was still limited by his time. The man may have been a secret authority on anatomy, music, art, engineering, and even frickin’ paleogeography, but we wouldn’t expect him to understand the best way to, say, design an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – that is, […]

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It’s hard to find a single common denominator that links all human societies and underpins all of our achievements as a species, but some scientists think that alcohol may be the most likely candidate. Known as the “drunk hypothesis”, this idea is based on the rationale that booze enhances social bonding and creativity, and that […]

If you go down to the ocean today, you might just be in for a big surprise. From deep-sea disco worms to orcas giving each other kelp massages, there’s no end to what the ocean can offer. Some of the more unusual characters to be found include fish species that can walk, and one of […]

Love black olives but turn your nose up at the green ones? We have news for you: they’re fundamentally the same thing. In fact, some so-called “black olives” aren’t naturally different from their green comrades at all; they’ve just been artificially altered with chemicals to give them a jet-black color and milder taste.  Botanically, green […]