Phys.org news
Phys.org / Chimpanzees' unusually protracted and vulnerable adolescences
For all the diversity of the human condition, one experience is almost universally painful: adolescence. It's also unusual. Most other species pass from puberty to adulthood quickly, but humans linger for years in a transitional ...
Phys.org / Earth's outer core beneath Pacific reversed direction in 2010, satellite data reveal
The liquid iron in Earth's outer core doesn't always behave as expected. When it changed direction in an unexplained way, ESA satellites provided data on the direction of flow, helping scientists gain better insight into ...
Phys.org / AI makes a major breakthrough in a math problem that had stumped experts for decades
For nearly 80 years, mathematicians have struggled to solve a classic geometry puzzle first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946: the planar unit distance problem. The question posed by the legendary Hungarian mathematician was, on ...
Phys.org / Astronomers discover a super-Earth orbiting a nearby red dwarf
Astronomers from Italy and Brazil have investigated a nearby red dwarf star known as Ross 318 and have discovered an exoplanet orbiting this star, which is at least six times more massive than Earth. The discovery is reported ...
Phys.org / Why the intrinsic quantum effects of axion dark matter are completely undetectable
Dark matter is an elusive form of matter that almost never emits, absorbs or reflects light, while only weakly interacting with regular matter. These properties make it very difficult to detect using conventional experimental ...
Phys.org / Hi-res microscopes give biologists petabytes of data. Scientists are creating an AI assistant to make sense of it
In a cramped, windowless room on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, two bespoke microscopes—each a Swiss Army knife for high-resolution imaging—operate around the clock gathering data that will help train a game-changing ...
Phys.org / Physicists figure out how to reduce formation of 'viscous fingers'
When they reach the bottom of a soap dispenser, frugal handwashers might try adding water to the bottle to push out the last bit of soap. But usually, the water drills right through the soap and jets out an only slightly ...
Phys.org / Something coming: what scientists know about a potential 'super' El Nino
Forecasters say a potentially "super" El Niño is rapidly taking shape in the Pacific—but whether it evolves into a history-making event could hinge on fickle winds and other volatile atmospheric shifts.
Phys.org / Why we live alone—and what it means for the climate and our sense of community
Solo living in your own home places a greater strain on the planet's resources than living with others, as everyone needs their own appliances—a toaster, a washing machine and so on. The Nordic countries stand out: Almost ...
Phys.org / 'Designer' superconducting diamond: Researchers uncover path to multi-modality quantum chips
Diamond is extremely valuable to science and technology not for its sparkle but for its extreme hardness, high thermal conductivity, transparency to a large fraction of the light spectrum, and a host of other exceptional ...
Phys.org / Hidden for 100 years, bright pink shrub identified as new Australian species
Botanists at the University of New England (UNE) have formally described a new plant species endemic to northeastern New South Wales (NSW), ending more than a century of scientific misidentification. The research has been ...
Phys.org / Just outside Jupiter, one region may have forged six meteorite parent bodies
When the solar system formed, a disk of gas and dust orbited the young sun. Over the course of millions of years, the dust gradually clumped together to form kilometer-sized chunks known as planetesimals. Some grew into planets, ...
