Phys.org news

Candida auris and Candida albicans are microscopic fungi that cause life-threatening human infections, killing almost a million people globally every year. The World Health Organization lists both species among the top four ...

In the hunt for one of nature's most elusive substances—dark matter, which makes up 85% of all matter in the universe—scientists are going to extremes. Deep underground and chilled to near absolute zero, the Super Cryogenic ...

In dark skies at night, distant starlight twinkles and speaks to vast cosmic histories almost as old as time itself. New data from instruments such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are helping astrophysicists probe deep ...

A team of researchers led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Chemistry has uncovered a faster way large carbon-based molecules may form in space, helping solve a long-standing mystery about how some of the ...

Some molecules come in two "handed" forms. This property, called chirality, can influence not only how molecules interact with light but also which electron spins they allow to pass. Researchers at the University of Osaka ...

Researchers have captured in real time the "birth moment" when the performance of a next-generation memory material is determined. The key lies in controlling oxygen vacancies, microscopic defects created when oxygen atoms ...

High-energy nuclear collisions recreate extreme conditions similar to those in the early universe, producing quark–gluon plasma (QGP), a hot state of matter in which quarks and gluons are no longer confined inside protons ...

Venus appears pale yellow in visible light, but ultraviolet images reveal dramatic dark and bright patterns moving with the planet's upper sulfuric acid clouds. Scientists have known about these markings for roughly a century, ...

Why do we remember certain moments while forgetting others? Every day, our minds are bombarded with thousands of pieces of information, yet our brains have a limited capacity to consolidate these experiences into lasting ...

Sea turtles are famous for being prodigious wanderers. Guided by Earth's magnetic field, ocean currents and the sun, they tend to crisscross the seas in search of food, returning to the region of their birth every few years ...

Just a few minutes of freezing and thawing can have a decisive impact on how ferrihydrite, the most reactive iron mineral in cold soils, permafrost and glaciers, transforms, according to researchers at Umeå University. As ...

Why do humans rely on XY chromosomes to determine sex, while birds use ZW—and many reptiles use neither, letting temperature decide instead? Sex determination is remarkably diverse across the animal kingdom. In genotypic ...