Phys.org news

Phys.org / Orangutans breastfeed for six and a half years, the longest among mammals

Orangutans have one of the slowest life histories among mammals, and a new study now shows just how long orangutan mothers continue to breastfeed their offspring. An international team has demonstrated that wild orangutan ...

2 hours ago
Phys.org / Wildfire dark brown carbon has strong global warming effects, study finds

A new international study published in Nature Geoscience reveals that dark brown carbon from wildfires exerts a powerful warming effect on the global climate—potentially matching or even exceeding that of black carbon in ...

2 hours ago
Phys.org / Last-of-its-kind tree clinging to cliffside finds new hope at botanic gardens

Conservationists are in a race against time to prevent one of the world's rarest island plants from disappearing forever, after seeds collected from the only surviving wild Dendroseris neriifolia tree arrived at the Millennium ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / Humans reshape predator-prey rules across food webs, creating a challenging new world for wildlife

The relationship between predators and prey in the wild is underscored by an evolutionary arms race spanning millions of years, but new research has found modern human activity is reshaping the rules.

3 hours ago
Phys.org / 'Bio-stickers' speed up plastic breakdown in marine environments

Plastic waste poses an urgent problem for the planet's ecosystems, especially in waterways. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter Earth's oceans every year, and plastic has been found in every part of the ocean, including ...

3 hours ago
Phys.org / 'Atom Camera' maps laser light at nanoscale using a single ultracold atom

A research group led by Assistant Professor Takafumi Tomita and Professor Kenji Ohmori at the Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, has developed a new microscopy technique called the Atom ...

8 hours ago
Phys.org / Megafire kills Joshua trees, but not fungi

When the Dome Fire tore through the Mojave Desert in 2020, it reduced 1 million Eastern Joshua trees to blackened skeletons. Scientists expected the underground ecosystem to be equally devastated. Instead, they found it thriving.

4 hours ago
Phys.org / Forever chemical reaches fish before they even hatch, new study reveals

There is a forever chemical lurking in the world's oceans that could be fundamentally altering the biology of marine life before it even hatches. PFOS, a notorious member of the PFAS family of chemicals, is known for its ...

4 hours ago
Phys.org / A climate fix with a hidden catch: Cutting methane reshapes ozone layer's comeback in unexpected ways

Reducing methane emissions will slow climate change but could also slow the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer, new research from the University of Reading shows.

4 hours ago
Phys.org / Electrical pulses reverse aging in sea squirts, offering clues for extending human longevity

A tiny sea creature might hold the secret to reversing the aging process. When treated with a brief series of electrical pulses, sea squirts experience dramatic and long-lasting health improvements that can significantly ...

23 hours ago
Phys.org / Heron-like, fish-eating dinosaur from 70 million years ago discovered in Argentina

A new raptor-like dinosaur from some 70 million years ago that ate fish and behaved like modern herons has been unearthed from southern Patagonia. The new species, which has been named Kank australis, was identified based ...

18 hours ago
Phys.org / The solar wind's secret hammerheads and what they tell us about heat in space

The proton sharks showed up on a Friday. In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA's Parker Solar Probe in 2020, a small group of scientists were scrolling through visualizations of their data showing solar winds. Suddenly, ...

21 hours ago