Phys.org news
Phys.org / Ancient brines helped build Idaho's Silver Valley and Cobalt belt
Idaho's Silver Valley has produced about 1.2 billion ounces of silver since the late 1800s, enough to cast a solid cube roughly as tall as a five-story building, along with huge amounts of lead and zinc. Now a new study led ...
Phys.org / High-resolution atlas shows how thirsty plants hold out during drought
The United States and Mexico have been in a historic megadrought since the turn of the century. For more than 25 years, the American Southwest has faced the severe social and economic consequences of this megadrought—including ...
Phys.org / Building a better, more precise droplet
A humble droplet can be an immensely useful tool for a number of fields, from medicine to manufacturing. Controlling the size of the droplet, though, is an important—and very tricky—task. With unprecedented precision, a team ...
Phys.org / The fish species that knows when you are watching them
Emperor cichlids, large fish native to Lake Tanganyika in Africa, don't like being stared at, especially if someone's gaze is directed at their offspring. Those are the findings of a new study published in the journal Royal ...
Phys.org / Platypus fur adds another strange feature to an increasingly long list
The combination of a beaver-like body and duck-like bill of the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is only the first of a long list of strange features on this unique creature. These odd mammals also lay eggs, have venomous ...
Phys.org / Neanderthals may have used birch tar for its anti-bacterial properties, experiments suggest
Neanderthals probably used birch tar for multiple functions, including treating their wounds, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by a team of researchers led by Tjaark Siemssen of the University ...
Phys.org / Children shaped clay 15,000 years ago, long before pottery or farming, archaeologists find
Long before pottery, before agriculture, when the first villages took shape, people in the Levant were already molding clay with their hands, carefully, deliberately, and sometimes playfully. Some of those hands belonged ...
Phys.org / Challenging a 300-year-old law of friction
Researchers at the University of Konstanz have uncovered a new mechanism of sliding friction: resistance to motion that arises without any mechanical contact, driven purely by collective magnetic dynamics. The study, published ...
Phys.org / The way you walk can reveal your true feelings
Whether you're striding with purpose, swaggering with confidence, or trudging slowly along the street, the way you walk can reveal how you're feeling, according to new research published in the journal Royal Society Open ...
Phys.org / Microwave quantum network shows resilience against heat-related disturbances
Quantum communication systems are emerging solutions to transmit information between devices in a network leveraging quantum mechanical phenomena, such as entanglement. Entanglement is a quantum effect that entails a link ...
Phys.org / Clearest evidence yet that giant planets spin faster than their cosmic lookalikes
For decades, astronomers have struggled to differentiate giant planets from brown dwarfs, a class of objects more massive than planets but too small to ignite nuclear fusion like true stars. Through a telescope, these cosmic ...
Phys.org / Is glass a solid or a super slow liquid? Physicists create equilibrium glassy phase from rod-shaped particles
Glass appears to be a solid, but in theory it sometimes behaves more like an extremely slow liquid. Physicists in Utrecht now show that glass-like structures can also exist in equilibrium, which is something many theories ...
