Phys.org news

Phys.org / Scottish 'pregnant grandmother' microbe bursts open after growing offspring within

Scientists have revealed a bizarre microscopic creature that reproduces in a way reminiscent of the horror film" Alien." The microbe grows one or more new cells inside its own body before the outer "mother" cell ruptures ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Hot subdwarfs come into focus as AI scans thousands of stars in Gaia data

There are myriad ways of "being a star," and scientists spend years trying to uncover and understand them. One unusual type is the so-called hot subdwarf—small stars that burn mysteriously hot for their size. Scientists from ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / From peas to potatoes, AI identifies nearly 800 promising plant proteins for food and cosmetics

Scientists from Leeds' School of Food Science and Nutrition have developed an advanced AI process that can rapidly identify plant proteins capable of acting as emulsifiers from tens of millions of initial candidates. To date, ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Soft nanoscale confinement prevents ice, exposing water's liquid-to-glass transition

An international collaboration of researchers has used ANSTO's facilities to uncover new properties of one of the most fundamental everyday materials, water, and answer an important scientific question. The findings, published ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Warming seas could shrink most mollusks by 2100, but some may grow

Research led by scientists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette challenges a long-held assumption about the effects of climate change on marine life: Warmer oceans won't simply make animals smaller.

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / The Arctic melt season is now more than a month longer than it was in the 1980s, new research on sea ice trends shows

Relatively few people have been to the Arctic, and even fewer have set foot in Antarctica. Most people rely on imagination and the media to visualize these landscapes and the ways they are changing.

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / BESIII sets world's most stringent direct limit on Lambda hyperon electric dipole moment

The BESIII Collaboration, led by the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has achieved the world's most precise measurement of the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the Lambda (Λ) hyperon using ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Satellites spot forest stress two years before bark beetle die-offs become apparent

Satellite measurements detected declining photosynthetic activity in Western U.S. forests two years before bark beetle mortality appeared in aerial detection surveys, according to new University of Utah-led research.

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / First switchable graphene nanoribbon that twists on demand

Researchers at Nagoya University have built a graphene nanoribbon that can switch the direction of its twist using a natural solvent. Graphene nanoribbons are thin, ribbon-shaped structures made of fused carbon rings. Twisted ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Dual-purpose qubit design could speed operations while cutting quantum errors

Researchers from MIT have designed a new qubit architecture that enables qubits to interact with each other much more quickly while remaining very stable. This advance could someday help scientists build practical quantum ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Biodegradable 'nanobone' could one day help regrow bone without painful grafts

For children born with cleft lip and palate, repairing gaps in the jawbone often means waiting until they are 10 to 12 years old before undergoing invasive bone graft surgery. University of Sydney researchers have developed ...

Sep 3, 2026
Phys.org / Quantum control algorithm looks to explain how birds migrate

The hidden world of quantum mechanics exists at scales many orders of magnitude smaller than living organisms, yet scientists have long theorized that quantum effects play an important role in biology. Birds' ability to sense ...

Sep 3, 2026