Phys.org news

Phys.org / 'The Heaven Sword' crowned as East Asia's tallest tree after a nearly decade-long search

Taiwan, historically known as Formosa, holds a secret deep within its rugged interior: it is one of the rare locations on Earth capable of supporting "giant" trees—specimens that tower over 80 meters in height. Since 2014, ...

3 hours ago
Phys.org / JWST 'weighs' dormant black hole 10 billion light-years away

The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and "weighed" by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL. The study, published in Science, identified a dormant black ...

13 hours ago
Phys.org / Costa Rica paid landowners to restore forests and biodiversity—bioacoustics indicate that it worked

Forest restoration can help fight climate change and restore lost biodiversity, but the satellite-based techniques used to measure successful forest restoration have been less-than-helpful for measuring changes in biodiversity. ...

14 hours ago
Phys.org / Rice–fish co-culturing could help curb schistosomiasis while increasing food production

The chronic disease schistosomiasis wreaks havoc on more than 220 million people around the world, with the vast majority of cases being in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite decades of mass drug administration campaigns, schistosomiasis ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / Measuring gravitational waves in a humming universe with a coordinate-free approach

Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime. Their first direct detection in 2015 marked a revolutionary moment in astronomy. Today, we have a thorough understanding of signals that travel far from their sources through ...

8 hours ago
Phys.org / Understanding Earth's hidden east-west symmetry could improve climate models

Earth is divided into two halves: the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Both reflect equal amounts of sunlight (albedo) even though they have different landmasses and weather patterns, especially cloud distribution. Why ...

15 hours ago
Phys.org / Easily overlooked small wetlands are a big source of global methane

Waterlogged land areas such as marshes, bogs and fens are the world's largest natural source of methane. Even the smallest of wetlands emit this powerful greenhouse gas. In a study from The University of Texas at Austin, ...

8 hours ago
Phys.org / Smarter land use could unlock biodiversity, climate and economic gains across 146 countries

National governments and multilateral institutions face difficult challenges reconciling environmental goals, such as biodiversity conservation and addressing climate change, with economic development goals. In a first-of-its-kind ...

8 hours ago
Phys.org / Deep-sea discovery uncovers new family of copepods near Greenland

An international research team, including Dr. Nancy Mercado Salas from the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB), has described a new family of copepods (Copepoda). The discovery was made at a depth ...

9 hours ago
Phys.org / Record ultraviolet quasar wind reaches 30% light speed near supermassive black hole

A team led by York University researchers has discovered the fastest wind near a supermassive black hole ever found at ultraviolet wavelengths, driven by the disk of matter (quasar) surrounding the black hole.

9 hours ago
Phys.org / Short videos may hinder learning by fragmenting attention and memory, study finds

Recent technological advances and the introduction of new digital media platforms have dramatically changed how people learn and source information about topics that interest them. Some recent studies have found that while ...

18 hours ago
Phys.org / Rare wild goats in Northumberland prove to be a genetically distinct breed

New research shows Cheviot goats are one of the UK's most genetically distinct goat populations. Led by Newcastle University, this is the first genetic study to determine the ancestry and genetic health of a UK feral goat ...

10 hours ago