Phys.org news
Phys.org / Archaeologists reveal secrets of prehistoric human-made island
Archaeologists from the University of Southampton have excavated and recorded a large timber platform hidden beneath what today appears to be a stone-built island, located in a Scottish loch. They used a technique called ...
Phys.org / Indigenous Andeans have a digestive superpower—and it may be linked to potatoes
Indigenous people of the Andes were the first to domesticate the potato, making the starch-rich crop a dietary staple for this high-altitude population long before it spread to the rest of the world. Today, their descendants ...
Phys.org / Medieval jaw reveals Scotland's first known dental bridge made from 20-carat gold
Without good dental care, teeth tend to suffer. An abundance of archaeological evidence has shown that poor oral health was common throughout history. And unsurprisingly, there have been many attempts at dental restoration ...
Phys.org / Why are mountain forests in Mexico and Central America hotspots for oak trees? Study shows most definitive answer yet
The mountains of Mexico and Central America harbor some of the greatest biodiversity of oak trees worldwide, and a landmark study conducted by The Morton Arboretum with U.S. and Mexican collaborators provides the most definitive ...
Phys.org / Small talk shapes big trends: Physics predicts how language patterns spread
A new model to predict how language changes over time has been developed by a statistical physicist at the University of Portsmouth. The model is a step towards understanding the "statistical physics of language," a scientific ...
Phys.org / Physics-based weather models more accurate than AI at predicting extreme weather
Weather forecasting is another aspect of modern life that artificial intelligence is transforming. Models like GraphCast, Pangu-Weather, and Fuxi are already better than traditional physics-based climate models at predicting ...
Phys.org / JWST pins down the origins of a planetary odd couple
Across the Milky Way galaxy, a planetary odd couple is circling a star some 190 light years from Earth. A normally "lonely" hot Jupiter is sharing space with a mini-Neptune, in a rare and unlikely pairing that's had astronomers ...
Phys.org / Astronomers map lifetime of over 100,000 molecular clouds across 66 galaxies
An international team of astronomers has analyzed the data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to investigate giant molecular clouds in nearby galaxies. The new ...
Phys.org / Life with one less: Engineered bacteria break the 20-amino-acid rule
One of life's many mysteries is how it ended up choosing only a set of 20 amino acids to build proteins for its wide catalog of organisms, from single-celled bacteria to behemoth whales. From a chemical standpoint, many of ...
Phys.org / Colored microplastics could be making global warming worse
There's more bad news about microplastics. We already know they pose a risk to health and can pollute ecosystems, but now researchers have discovered that tiny plastic particles drifting in Earth's atmosphere could be a significant ...
Phys.org / Why isolated human groups speak more diverse languages even as genetic diversity shrinks
Languages and human DNA both capture aspects of human diversity. But how are they related? A new international study led by the University of Zurich finds a clear but counterintuitive pattern: regions with high genetic diversity ...
Phys.org / Three billion years ago, Earth's life relied on a rare metal
A collaborative team of scientists has discovered that life on Earth over three billion years ago relied on the metal molybdenum, which was incredibly scarce in the environment at the time. The study, published in Nature ...
