Phys.org news

Researchers have designed and built the first 3D device that can make objects invisible to heat, an advance that could transform how we protect sensitive electronics, manage heat in microchips and shield equipment from thermal ...

A giant mirror to create "sunlight on demand" was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), despite opposition from astronomers and the public, and real safety concerns.

One of the many marvels of the Roman world is that some of its buildings are still with us. But why have they lasted for so long when some relatively modern structures are in a state of decay after a few decades?

Sugars are key biomolecules in living organisms, as they form the backbone of DNA and RNA and play a fundamental role in metabolic processes. In theories of the origin of life, sugars are also essential for the synthesis ...

Scientists have detected evidence of landslides on Pluto for the first time. A paper published in the journal Icarus reports that images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby revealed six large landslides in ...

For over a century, the accepted value for a firefly's brightness has mostly stood, tracing its origins to experiments carried out in 1912. Through rigorous new analysis published in the American Journal of Physics, David ...

Pyrite, an iron sulfide ore, is often known as fool's gold because its shiny metallic luster and pale brass-yellow color can easily fool the untrained eye into mistaking it for real gold. This time, however, 360 kilometers ...

Earth has a natural thermostat that has kept the planet habitable for more than 100 million years. Scientists have struggled to fully explain how it works, but new research identifies a missing link between phosphate availability ...

As scientists around the world closely monitor the possible development of a powerful "Super El Niño," a new study suggests that another tropical ocean deserves equal attention. Researchers have found that temperature changes ...

Recent improvements in our understanding of how the principles of thermodynamics apply in the quantum realm could give a boost to quantum technology, and a clearer picture of quantum thermodynamics could in turn enhance our ...

Researchers have captured how a molecule redistributes energy after absorbing light, differentiating the roles of individual atoms in the process. They used X-ray flashes from the European XFEL to show that different atoms ...

Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Colorado Boulder have directly observed, for the first time, four white dwarfs in binary star systems in our nearby region of space. These stellar binaries are ...