Phys.org news
Phys.org / Meteor as heavy as an elephant causes widespread speculation across New England
When the double boom rang out in New England over the weekend, shaking homes and sending pets fleeing, questions started flooding social media.
Phys.org / Under Notre Dame cathedral, a 'dig of the century' unearths 1,700 years of history
Wilting in the summer sun, a line of tourists waits to climb Notre Dame cathedral and meet its gargoyles.
Phys.org / Lab evolution recreates COVID's path to omicron in months, reveals key conditions
A key step in the origin of many pandemics occurs when an animal-borne virus infects humans and then evolves to spread more efficiently from person to person. That is why scientists and physicians keep a close watch on viruses ...
Phys.org / A new origin story for multicellular life points to physics, not genes alone
How did life make the leap from single cells to coordinated, multicellular organisms? And how do genetically identical cells still perform a version of that feat every time an embryo begins to take shape?
Phys.org / City birds dazzle females with 'borrowed' human items
Bowerbirds in an Australian city use a range of human items—from glass and plastic to banknotes and even a pair of handcuffs—to impress females, shows new research in Royal Society Open Science. Male bowerbirds create an ...
Phys.org / Amazon rainforest emits new stress-defense molecules during El Niño drought
The Amazon rainforest responded to the most severe drought ever recorded in the basin with an unexpected defense mechanism. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, found that during and after ...
Phys.org / UN warns world to prepare for El Nino extreme weather
There is an 80% chance of the warming El Niño phenomenon developing between June and August, increasing the risk of extreme weather events, the World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.
Phys.org / Small Magellanic Cloud is being pulled apart, reshaping how astronomers read its past
Using more than a decade of observations from the VISTA Survey of the Magellanic Clouds (VMC), researchers measured the motions of millions of stars across the Small Magellanic Cloud with unprecedented precision. The new ...
Phys.org / Bees can swim and use visual cues to survive water crashes
When a bee crashes into water, it may still be able to swim to safety. New research from Michigan State University confirms that honeybees can propel themselves across the water's surface, and their movement is purposeful ...
Phys.org / Terahertz imaging maps spatial chirality in materials with 100-micrometer resolution
In nature, there exist structures that are mirror images of each other but cannot be perfectly superimposed. These are known as chiral objects, derived from the Greek word for "hand," since left and right hands share the ...
Phys.org / Strain creates moiré 2D materials without twisting or stacking, opening more scalable route
Cornell researchers have developed a new way to create moiré patterns—atomic-scale structures that can give materials unusual quantum behaviors—without relying on the traditionally used difficult-to-control twisting and stacking ...
Phys.org / Animals were sharpening their senses long before the Cambrian explosion, ancient tracks reveal
Tracks left by some of the earliest complex animals are giving new insights into how they experienced the world. New research reveals how these creatures started to understand their surroundings, paving the way for animal ...
