Phys.org news

University of Missouri researchers have discovered a new way to harness one of the body's natural defenses: copper. While copper is essential for life and helps power important biological processes, having too much of it ...

Superfluid helium could offer a new way to tackle one of the biggest challenges in scaling up quantum computers, say researchers from the University of Surrey. The research team has introduced a conceptual design for a new ...

A new study suggests that a period of intense fires and landscape upheaval in the ancient southern Levant may have helped create the conditions that led Neolithic communities to discover how fire could transform clay.

What if the key to making stronger, more sustainable plastics isn't changing their ingredients, but rearranging their molecules? Virginia Tech researchers have put that idea to the test, creating degradable polymers with ...

Intense, brief flashes of radio light called fast radio bursts (FRBs) travel across billions of light-years to reach Earth, passing through a fog of matter along the way. The bursts' origins are unclear but may originate ...

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists used simulations to understand the role disruptive impacts play on icy moons with subsurface oceans in our solar system. A recent paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy ...

Researchers at The University of Manchester and the Australian National University have developed a new class of molecular magnets that combines the most successful features of previous designs, resulting in some of the strongest ...

As NASA prepares to send humans to Mars as early as the 2030s, University of Mississippi researchers are working on one of the key questions: How will they get back?

Every cell relies on ribosomes, the molecular machines that read genetic instructions and use them to assemble proteins. A cell needs thousands of types of proteins at any one time, so ribosomes must be generalists, capable ...

Melons produce many seeds, making the melon shape a traditional symbol of fertility and prosperity in Chinese culture. But the historical debate about how melons made their way to modern tables is as long and twisted as ...

Climate change is driving rapid declines in seaweed forests globally, outpacing restoration efforts and undermining seaweed restoration as a viable carbon dioxide removal strategy, according to an essay by Karen Filbee-Dexter ...

How will global access to food, water and energy evolve in coming decades? A new study coauthored by MIT researchers suggests the answers could be very different depending on region, resource and income.