Phys.org news

More than 6,500 years ago, someone carefully drilled a hole in a human tooth, strung it on a cord and likely used it as a necklace. Found during field surveys at the Vinča cultural site of Jablanica in Serbia, the human tooth ...

Precise activation of tens of thousands of genes is critical for healthy development and growth. Specialized segments of our DNA are responsible for carefully orchestrating genetic sequences that result in the production ...

Now it's the moon's turn to pull a disappearing act. After being shut out of this month's total solar eclipse, the Americas will have the best seats in the celestial house when Earth's shadow briefly envelops the moon. Almost ...

Ammonia is one of the most important chemicals produced in the world, ranking second only to sulfuric acid in the total volume produced each year. It is used mostly to make fertilizer, which is essential to feeding the world's ...

A human, an octopus, and a coral could hardly look more different—yet deep inside their cells, their chromosomes still carry recognizable pieces of a genome inherited from an animal ancestor that lived more than 600 million ...

As autumn gives way to winter across the Arctic, the ground doesn't immediately freeze solid. Instead, soils often linger near the freezing point for days or even weeks in a phase called the zero curtain. In a new NASA-led ...

Biomolecular nanomachines, such as enzymes and molecular motors, are the workhorses behind the synthesis and organization of complex materials in life. Powered by chemical energy, they build, transport and organize biomolecules, ...

Sometimes science throws up the unexpected. When a team of researchers set out to model river erosion in Canada's High Arctic, they did not expect the findings to defy common sense.

Many people are aware that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN smashes tiny subatomic particles together at nearly the speed of light to test foundational laws of physics and discover new fundamental particles, but some ...

From the daily weather forecast to a baseball player's batting average to an individual's risk of developing lung cancer, understanding statistics can help people in the United States navigate their lives, according to Mark ...

During a coronal mass ejection (CME), the sun hurls billions of tons of magnetized plasma into space. These eruptions are among the most powerful events in the solar system, and when they are aimed toward Earth, they can ...

For decades, archaeologists have been uncovering rare and mysterious incised obsidian arrowheads across Neolithic Central Anatolia, each one bearing a unique design etched into its glassy black surface nearly 9,000 years ...