Phys.org news

Evolution is all about trade-offs. Traits that may be beneficial in one situation may backfire in another. Over millions of years, species can become specialized for one way of living rather than being equally good at everything. ...

Birds can inhabit various environments with different climates and temperatures, ranging from cold polar regions to scorching hot deserts. To survive and thrive in these very different environments, they need to effectively ...

Millions of people living on tropical islands could face a future of increasingly dangerous heat as climate change drives longer and more intense periods of humid conditions. While rising temperatures are often discussed ...

If you look up invasive species in a textbook, there's a good chance you'll find a picture of a brown tree snake. Native to Australia and the South Pacific, the brown tree snake arrived on Guam sometime after World War II, ...

The most severe droughts in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean arose when multiple natural climate cycles coincided, according to a new study from Stockholm University published in Science Advances. The findings shed new light ...

All four main LHC experiments have found new signs that oxygen and neon collisions may create the extreme state of matter that existed during the first microseconds after the Big Bang.

The promise of quantum computing is to solve complex problems faster and more energy-efficiently than today's supercomputers—from optimizing logistics to simulating molecules. This goal is coming within reach as the number ...

Photographs can reveal things that are otherwise impossible for the naked eye to see, be they distant galaxies or microscopic cells. Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University have developed a practical and versatile imaging ...

Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons, has long fascinated scientists because of what may lie beneath its frozen shell: a global ocean of liquid water. That hidden ocean has made Europa one of the most compelling places in the ...

Ancient samples from the moon's far side are helping scientists uncover how asteroid impacts shaped the early solar system. The findings challenge decades of thinking about when those impacts occurred and offer new insights ...

Nitrate contamination of drinking water poses a major health concern, particularly in agricultural communities where fertilizers, livestock manure and septic systems can leach nitrates into groundwater. Many rural households ...

It's been said that a finely tuned ear knows the size and shape of a piano by merely listening to the instrument's notes. An international team of physicists has now devised an analogous approach to detect the universe's ...