Phys.org news

Laser scanning, often referred to as lidar, has rapidly transformed how tropical forest regions are studied, monitored and understood across academic disciplines. The technology enables researchers to peer through dense forest ...

Astronomers have confirmed that one of the fastest-changing stars ever observed has entered a new stage of its evolution, offering a rare opportunity to watch a star's life unfold on human timescales.

Right whales forage near the water's surface at night, putting them at greater risk of potentially fatal collisions with boats, Jay Kirkham at Dalhousie University, Canada, and colleagues report Sept. 16, 2026, in the journal ...

From social media to the streets of Washington, D.C., the organized white nationalist movement has become more visible in the United States over the past few decades. But the extent of this extremist movement's appeal to ...

Whether on a windowpane at home or during the industrial cleaning of computer chips: droplets sliding over solid surfaces become electrically charged. Yet the physical mechanism behind this charging remains a subject of debate. ...

Across its basins and thousands of meters down, the Mediterranean Sea is getting warmer and saltier. Now, a new study finds it is also doing so at an increasingly rapid pace. The speedup is largest in the central and eastern ...

Physicists at Leipzig University and Charles University in Prague have developed a method for changing the swimming style of tiny artificial microswimmers in real time. They can make a single microscopic particle switch at ...

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have uncovered two complementary mechanisms that govern coherence in miniaturized lasers composed of metallic nanoparticle arrays incorporated into an optical gain material, ...

Crystals are usually imagined as rigid objects with flat faces and straight edges. A research team led by the University of Osaka has recently created a porous crystal that grows into a spring-like helix. The team also found ...

By evaluating the health of waterways across the U.S., researchers have identified a network encompassing about one-third of rivers and streams that, if conserved and restored, could sustain the nation's freshwater biodiversity ...

Lichens colonize trees and rocks all over the world. They are symbiotic communities between fungi and photosynthetically active green algae or cyanobacteria, in which both partners benefit from each other: The fungal partner ...

As the climate warms, people are more exposed to heat stress, which depresses productivity and the global economy. A study from the University of California, Davis, quantifies the cost of heat stress on global labor.