Phys.org news

Phys.org / European heatwave's unlikely accomplice: An ocean 'cold blob'

The heat wave battering Europe may have an unlikely partner in crime: a patch of cold ocean water south of Iceland and Greenland that can influence weather patterns over the continent.

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Pacific plate's rotation gave Alaska's Aleutian Islands a later-life lift

New research by Brown University geologists confirms that the Aleutian Islands, the archipelago stretching from Alaska to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, experienced a massive geological uplift between 5 million and 7 million ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Ocean warming above 1.5°C triggered year-round marine disruption across globe, study shows

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) led one of the first global assessments of how marine ecosystems responded during the first year when global temperatures temporarily exceeded 1.5°C ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Secrets of how we see color revealed at the molecular level

A global team has cracked a decades-old mystery, revealing the atomic structures of the molecules in our eyes that allow us to see colors. "To understand how we detect light and perceive colors, we need to know the exact ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Elusive thorium–thorium bonding directly observed using Hirshfeld atom refinement

Researchers have directly visualized a rare type of chemical bond between some of the heaviest elements in the periodic table, providing experimental evidence of how these atoms share electrons in systems where this has been ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / How bacteria use circadian clocks to colonize their world

Research has revealed how bacteria rely on circadian clocks to control the spread of their multicellular colonies. The findings provide important clues as to how we might improve soil health and plant growth. They may also ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Whitebait rapidly switch life cycles when earthquakes cut off route to sea

Aotearoa New Zealand whitebait can rapidly switch their life cycles in response to sudden environmental changes, new University of Otago—Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka research shows. The research is published in the journal Nature ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / ROS-producing enzymes guide plant cell division and tissue patterning, gene-editing study shows

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced naturally during cellular metabolism often cause oxidative damage to cells. However, these molecules also play an important role in normal cellular signaling. While ROS are established ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Do animal behavior experiments give a distorted view of cooperation?

When biologists study cooperation in animals, they usually offer just a single task at a time. But what happens when animals can choose among several opportunities to work together? Biologists at Utrecht University discovered ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Rising heat and humidity challenge energy-efficient data center cooling worldwide

Reliable operation of data centers has become essential to nearly all sectors of modern society, including health care, education, government services, power grid operation, banking, defense and disaster relief. New research ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / Screen reveals new proteins that control RNA processing

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a large-scale screening approach that identifies proteins controlling a fundamental step in gene expression known as alternative polyadenylation (APA). ...

Jun 26, 2026
Phys.org / A thermodynamic approach to gravity could explain cosmic acceleration without dark energy

Gravity, the force that attracts objects toward each other, is currently framed by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This framework describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime, the invisible four-dimensional ...

Jun 25, 2026