Phys.org news

A chemical analysis of residential soils and ash around California homes burned by the Eaton and Palisades wildfires in early 2025 revealed wide variation in contamination by potentially harmful elements, including lead, ...

Controlling and trapping molecules, units of a substance consisting of two or more chemically bound atoms, with laser light is significantly more challenging than trapping individual atoms. This is because molecules exhibit ...

Lurking at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of the sun, surrounded by a puzzling collection of young, massive stars whose orbits have long defied ...

Over recent decades, harmful algal blooms have become increasingly common. These blooms often consist of bacteria called "cyanobacteria" in freshwater ecosystems. They can produce debilitating toxins, suffocate marine life ...

The Himalayas are often seen as one of Earth's great natural barriers, separating the heavily populated and industrialized regions of South Asia from the remote Tibetan Plateau. But new research, published in Geophysical ...

Astronomers from Germany and Turkey have analyzed available data from various space telescopes to investigate an ultraluminous X-ray source designated X-4, which is located in the nearby galaxy NGC 4631. Results of the new ...

From June 29 onward, Switzerland's glaciers will have exhausted their snow reserves. Every liter of meltwater now causes them to lose mass—this is Glacier Loss Day. Between the extreme years of 2003 and 2022 alone, 200 square ...

Traces or perforations caused by living organisms after an animal's death can be found on various dinosaur bone remains. These perforations, known as bioerosion structures, provide information that helps us understand relationships ...

When the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned green with algae just days after a US$15 million renovation, the U.S. government scrambled for chemicals and expensive technical solutions to fix the iconic landmark.

Flinders University researchers, in partnership with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, have found evidence that points to 7,000 years of Aboriginal mining of stone at Sugarloaf Hill in South Australia's ...

Scientists have discovered that two common human pathogens can work together by managing copper in their shared environment—a finding that could open new ways to break down stubborn mixed biofilms.

Archaeologists have uncovered an unknown stone circle that dates back at least 4,000 years to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age and was most likely used for ritual activities.