Phys.org news

A supermassive black hole with a case of cosmic indigestion has been burping out the remains of a shredded star for four years—and it's still going strong, new research led by a University of Oregon astrophysicist shows.

Recent advances in biomolecular archaeology have revealed that ancient objects can retain the molecular fingerprints of past aromatic practices. These molecules provide unprecedented insight into ancient perfumery, medicine, ...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered experimental evidence that particles of matter emerging from energetic subatomic smashups retain a key feature of virtual particles ...

Snakes may well be one of nature's greatest predators, capable of eating whole deer or even crocodiles, but just as impressive is that they can go months, or even a whole year, without a single meal. And now an international ...

You can tell a lot about a material based on the type of light shining at it: Optical light illuminates a material's surface, while X-rays reveal its internal structures and infrared captures a material's radiating heat. ...

Astronomers have strengthened long-standing predictions that massive runaway stars could have originated in binary pairs, and were dramatically ejected into space when their companion stars underwent supernova explosions. ...

When some ancient Romans were feeling a little under the weather, they were treated with human feces. While this practice was mentioned in ancient Greco-Roman medical texts by figures such as Pliny the Elder, there was no ...

Should we protect an emblematic species if it may come at the cost of another one—particularly in ecosystems that are still recovering from human impacts? This is the conservation dilemma facing Monte Leon National Park, ...

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new massive and quiescent red galaxy, which they dubbed "Red Potato." The discovery was reported in a research paper published ...

Great things can come from failure when it comes to geology. The Midcontinent rift formed about 1.1 billion years ago and runs smack in the middle of the United States at the Great Lakes. The rift failed to completely rupture, ...

That low-frequency fuzz that can bedevil cellphone calls has to do with how electrons move through and interact in materials at the smallest scale. The electronic flicker noise is often caused by interruptions in the flow ...

A new study challenges the idea that climate change drove early human innovation. Instead, researchers find that cultural developments arose under different environmental conditions, shaped by movement, interaction, and knowledge ...