Phys.org news

When scientists study bacteria that are not in a Petri dish or a test tube but in environments that more closely mimic their actual microbial habitats, they often find delightfully unexpected behaviors. For Sujit Datta, a ...

The universe has been having fewer and fewer stellar "babies." Over the past 4.5 billion years, the rate of star birth has crashed to less than half of what it once was. But here's the twist: the most essential "fuel" for ...

Data from many sources, including NASA, have shown a significant decrease in Arctic sea ice since 1979. However, the processes driving the melting and freezing of sea ice are complex, and fluctuations occur throughout the ...

For nearly 80 years, physicists have relied on a thought experiment created by Richard Feynman to predict how quantum particles behave. For the first time, researchers in China have tested this trick directly in the lab.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified one of the most distant exploding stars ever confirmed. The supernova, SN 2023aeaf, was found at a redshift of 3.195—so far away that its light has been traveling ...

Europe is no stranger to powerful windstorms, but some storms capable of causing serious damage have an unusual origin. Tropical cyclones can occasionally travel north from lower latitudes and reach Europe, where they can ...

The ancient Romans were a deeply religious and superstitious people, worshiping dozens of cults—some official and others secretive. One of these was dedicated to Sabazios, a deity from Thrace and Phrygia (regions spanning ...

Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery behind a nearly two-decade-old cosmic explosion that seemed to break the rules of physics. The energy output of a powerful gamma-ray burst, GRB 061201, discovered in 2006, did ...

One of the central ideas in modern physics is the phase transition—a sudden transformation of the state of a material. We encounter phase transitions throughout everyday life: water freezes into ice, wax melts in the warmth ...

A new study led by Flinders University has flipped the historical narrative about Australia's thylacine, finding the native apex predator known as the "Tasmanian tiger" was significantly different from the wolves and wild ...

Despite the importance and dominance of angiosperms ("flowering plants") in the current ecosystem, it is rather surprising that we know so little about their origin and early evolution. Paleobotanists have been making efforts ...

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have uncovered a new phenomenon that challenges a longstanding assumption about how electronic materials respond to magnetic fields. The discovery broadens the fundamental understanding ...