Phys.org news

A large asteroid will zip past Earth this weekend, but don't worry: It poses no danger.

Scientists have spotted two humpback whales that made separate, record-breaking crossings between Australia and Brazil.

The Himalayas are often seen as one of Earth's great natural barriers, separating the heavily populated and industrialized regions of South Asia from the remote Tibetan Plateau. But new research, published in Geophysical ...

Controlling and trapping molecules, units of a substance consisting of two or more chemically bound atoms, with laser light is significantly more challenging than trapping individual atoms. This is because molecules exhibit ...

Over recent decades, harmful algal blooms have become increasingly common. These blooms often consist of bacteria called "cyanobacteria" in freshwater ecosystems. They can produce debilitating toxins, suffocate marine life ...

In May 2024, auroras were observed at unusually low latitudes across the globe, lighting up skies that rarely see such displays. Inside Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space surrounding our planet and dominated by its ...

Lurking at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of the sun, surrounded by a puzzling collection of young, massive stars whose orbits have long defied ...

Astronomers from Germany and Turkey have analyzed available data from various space telescopes to investigate an ultraluminous X-ray source designated X-4, which is located in the nearby galaxy NGC 4631. Results of the new ...

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have developed a technique for interrogating molecules on surfaces with spectroscopic precision, thereby reaching the ultimate quantum limit for the first ...

Traces or perforations caused by living organisms after an animal's death can be found on various dinosaur bone remains. These perforations, known as bioerosion structures, provide information that helps us understand relationships ...

Archaeologists have uncovered an unknown stone circle that dates back at least 4,000 years to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age and was most likely used for ritual activities.

A mission to raise the orbit of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, at 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall ...