Deborah Bloomfield

In the history of Homo sapiens, blue eyes just showed up fashionably late. Throughout most of the species’ existence, all humans had brown eyes, until a random genetic mutation emerged over 6,000 years ago in a single prehistoric person. This trait eventually spread, giving rise to the millions of blue-eyed people in the world today. […]

At the ripe old age of ~124 years old, Henry is the oldest known crocodile in the world – and what a life he’s led. In the past few decades alone, the mature gentleman has fathered thousands upon thousands of offspring. With all those decades under his belt, Henry has amassed a gigantic size. The […]

A case report details the story of a family who lived with 2,055 brown recluse spiders in their Kansas home over the course of five and a half years. Spiders have a pretty bad reputation amongst humans for a group of species that is so good at pest control. But while most species are harmless, […]

Though our telescopes have become pretty darn good over the last century, there’s nothing quite like seeing a planet from the point of view of an approaching spaceship. In 1979, 1980, and 1981, humanity got our first brief glimpses of Saturn from close up, as Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2 flew past the […]

Unlike ancient Egypt, Hawai’i, or the Inca Empire, Neolithic Ireland probably wasn’t governed by a dynasty of demi-gods who married their own siblings. This finding contradicts the narrative hastily put forward by the media in 2020 following the discovery of a rare case of incest in a 5,500-year-old passage tomb. Located in the Boyne Valley, […]

For almost 48 years, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have traveled across the Solar System and beyond. The missions have been pivotal in our understanding of the gas giant planets of the Solar System, and later of interstellar space, becoming the first human-made objects to enter it. However, they were not the first missions designed […]

How much does a forest weigh? This sounds like a philosophical question, but we will be able to answer it soon thanks to the European Space Agency’s Biomass spacecraft. The mission possesses a special radar that can map woodland areas from space. Now, it has released its first-ever images, and they cover more than just […]

It might look like a prehistoric gummy bear, but this palm-sized figurine is an exceptional piece of art and a mysterious outlier in both time and place. The figurine was found in December 2022 near Kołobrzeg in northern Poland near the Baltic coast. Archaeologists have carefully pored over the object for a couple of years, […]

On Monday (June 23), Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit from the Space Launch Complex at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The dedicated rideshare mission contained 70 payloads, including a few unusual and notable experiments, as well as human remains. Unfortunately for researchers and families of the deceased, the […]

Mercury is an odd little planet. The closest world to the Sun has some extreme surface structures, steep hills and cliffs, which have long been suspected to be the effect of the planet’s interior cooling and shrinking. However, certain features cannot be explained by shrinking alone, and a team of researchers suspects that the Sun’s […]

Who owns the Moon? If you ask a hippy or a space lawyer, the answer is pretty clear: nobody. But according to Dennis Hope, the answer is “Dennis Hope” and “anyone Dennis Hope sells the Moon to”. The latter category, according to Hope, includes presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. In 1967, […]

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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially unveiled its first images, and truly, it is going to be as revolutionary as people expect it to be. Thanks to its incredible eye on the cosmos, which is the largest digital camera in the world, the images are absolutely breathtaking – and we can’t even share the […]

An incredibly rare genetic mutation has given rise to a brand new blood type which is currently thought to exist in just one person. Known as “Gwada negative”, the exceptional blood group was identified earlier this month in a French woman from the island of Guadeloupe, solving a mystery that had puzzled doctors since 2011, […]

What words spring to mind when you think of the common garden snail? Slow? Slimy? Venomous? You might be raising your eyebrows at that last one, but according to a new study, humble garden snails are just one of a slew of new venomous animals under a fresh definition of the concept. The radical redefinition […]

Animals using tools is always a pretty cool facet of their behavior, from monkeys cracking nuts to elephants sabotaging their mates’ showers. Now thanks to some pretty nifty drone footage, researchers have revealed a new kind of tool use in orcas, and it might just be the latest wellness trend to take over. Orcas are […]

There are lots of situations where getting a look at the human brain can be very helpful. Unfortunately, our heads are famously opaque, so decades of research and development have gone into finding ways to break through this barrier and catch a glimpse of the workings underneath. A recent study has taken this one step […]

A letter from renowned physicist Albert Einstein outlining his own role in the development of the atomic bomb and his opposition to war has been put up for auction, with a guide price of between $100,000 and $150,000. In early 1939, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann announced a discovery that would change the […]

Animals can work cooperatively in groups all the time to impress females, catch prey, or even groom each other. Species working with another species outside of their own is a lot more unusual, but this appeared to be what a local conservationist group in Western Australia recorded recently.  Australia’s Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury recorded […]

Welcome to a new era in visual astronomy, and it is down to the incredible camera at the heart of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The instrument is the largest digital camera in the world, and thanks to the incredible pictures and just-released videos, you can tell that this is indeed the case. This morning, […]