Phys.org news
Phys.org / Fish DNA and 10,000 crystals rewrite Colorado River's Grand Canyon origin story
For more than 150 years, scientists have debated when and how the Colorado River first carved its way through the Grand Canyon. Now, a new study led by researchers at the University of New Mexico offers evidence that the ...
Phys.org / Study identifies key mechanism regulating how cells use fat to generate energy
An international study by scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has identified a fundamental mechanism that regulates ...
Phys.org / The color of penguin poo: Satellites reveal global warming's impact on an iconic polar species
Scientists from a handful of universities across the country have made innovative use of satellite images from NASA to determine the diet of Antarctic Adélie penguins across the continent by studying their icy feces with ...
Phys.org / Using mechanical vibrations instead of magnetic memory for quantum computing
Quantum computers still face limits when it comes to storing information. Researchers at ETH Zurich are now turning to mechanical vibrations rather than electromagnetic memory. Their new vibrating memory can store significantly ...
Phys.org / Ancient fossil may reveal animal kingdom's earliest right-handedness at 550 million years old
Scientists have uncovered what may be the earliest evidence of "right-handedness" in the animal kingdom, dating back more than half a billion years. The discovery comes from the fossil record of Spriggina floundersi, an organism ...
Phys.org / Hidden deep-sea turbulence could alter climate and fisheries within one lifetime
Tiny, invisible swirls and twirls—not much bigger than a coin—deep below the ocean's surface are silently shaping some of the biggest forces shaping our climate: sea level rise, fisheries collapse, extreme flooding and how ...
Phys.org / Wearables to track plant health: Farmers could use real-time information to manage crop conditions
A smartwatch can tell us the level of oxygen in our blood, when our sleep is restless or the number of steps we take in a day. Now imagine that kind of tracking ability for plants. By the time farmers see curling leaves or ...
Phys.org / Young giant gas planet Beta Pic B refuses to reveal its origin
The young planetary system of the 23-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris (short: Beta Pic) is regarded as an iconic circumstellar dust disk, which hosts at least three giant gas planets. Discovered in 2008 by direct imaging, ...
Phys.org / Genetic crossovers defy chromosome-length model in male and female mice
A Cornell-led study is challenging a decades-old explanation for how chromosomes exchange genetic material within the biological process that forms eggs and sperm in mammals.
Phys.org / Falling water levels trigger a surge in methane emissions from Mediterranean reservoirs
Continental aquatic ecosystems, such as lakes and reservoirs, occupy a small proportion of Earth's surface but play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. It is estimated that more than 40% of global methane emissions ...
Phys.org / Shackleton's final ship is no longer just a sonar shadow
An expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has obtained the first close-up images of the wreck of Quest, the last ship of famed Antarctic explorer ...
Phys.org / AI can predict how you'll respond to a survey—but that's not the same as understanding you
What makes people change their minds or their behavior? Social scientists spend a lot of time thinking about this question, and experiments are one of the most powerful ways to answer it.