Phys.org news

Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else? Scientists are now making progress in deciphering the complex chemical cocktail that makes particular people more enticing to these disease-spreading bloodsuckers.

The fundamentals of quantum mechanics are minuscule. Scientists constantly home in on finer resolutions to measure, quantify, and control these fundamentals, like photons that carry light and have no mass unless they are ...

For better or worse, a huge number of people will be affected by efforts to achieve "30x30"—the internationally-agreed conservation goal to protect and conserve at least 30% of the world's land and seas by 2030. How many ...

Our gut is colonized by legions of bacteria, which supply us with essential nutrients and support our health. Among them are Akkermansia bacteria, which might be helpful in the management of conditions like obesity and diabetes.

Isotope analysis of gas from geothermal springs in Zambia could show that a new continental rift is forming, scientists say. Unexpectedly high helium isotope ratios indicate that a weakness in Earth's crust has broken through ...

A recent study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology documented skeletal changes linked to scurvy in Late Holocene archaeological sites in California (500 BCE–1834 CE). The change observed shows the cascading ...

For decades, the search for life beyond Earth has revolved around a key question: What molecules should scientists be looking for on other planets or moons? A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, suggests that the more ...

Astronomers have discovered two early-universe galaxies where the central black holes appear to have grown far faster than their host galaxies. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal that the black ...

Accurate experiments on how ocean warming affects marine life are vital to ensure we can best prepare for the future, protect our food sources, and help safeguard ocean ecosystems. But some of these experiments may miss how ...

From navigation to solar weather forecasting, many different areas of research require space-based sensors to measure Earth's magnetic field as accurately as possible at any given moment. So far, however, existing sensors ...

Recent satellite remote sensing surveys have identified 280 stone structures spread across the Atbai desert in Sudan. Twenty of these structures were previously identified by fieldwork or informal surveys, but were not systematically ...

There's so little we know about circumbinary planets—planets that orbit two stars instead of one—that they can feel like the stuff of fantasy. And for good reason: to date, we've only confirmed the existence of 18 circumbinary ...