Phys.org news

Phys.org / How temperature swings impact the growth of young songbirds

Climate change threatens to cause increasingly extreme and variable temperature swings, affecting everything from urban infrastructure to global food supplies. In the animal kingdom, the hardest hit may be the youngest and ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / Room-temperature multiferroic could pave way to low-energy computing

A team of researchers at Rice University has engineered a new version of a well-known multiferroic that exhibits orders of magnitude higher performance at room temperature than its parent material. The study, published in ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / A silent robot shadows sperm whales by listening to their clicks

An autonomous underwater glider is giving us a new and effective way to track sperm whales by tuning into their clicks and silently following them. To study these large oceanic predators, researchers need to monitor their ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / In good spirits: Why haunted houses are perfect places to connect with others

A pounding heart, shaking limbs, chills and a churning stomach—it's no wonder that fear is an emotion we usually try to avoid. At least most of the time. We may not like having the wits scared out of us in a real-life crisis, ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / GP Com observations sharpen picture of a rare ultracompact binary system

Using the Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory, Bulgarian astronomers have conducted optical photometric observations of an ultracompact binary known as GP Com. Results of the observational campaign, presented in the ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / A longstanding quantum roadblock just fell, opening existing fiber networks to ultra-secure light signals

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have broken a longstanding barrier by managing to send single photons—that can't be copied or split and thus are secure—in the network of optical fibers we already have. This opens ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / Quantum computing's next dark horse emerges from a frozen surface, where almost nothing behaves as expected

Quantum bits (qubits) are the fundamental building blocks of quantum information processing. A novel qubit platform invented at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory exhibits noise levels thousands ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / DAMPE satellite reveals cosmic rays share spectral break near 15 teravolts

A century after their discovery, cosmic rays—particles of extreme energy originating from the far reaches of the universe—remain a mystery to scientists. The DAMPE (Dark Matter Particle Explorer) space telescope is tackling ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / Laser-plasma accelerators can preserve polarization of Helium-3 ions

Particle accelerators such as those at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva are typically highly complex large-scale devices. In these ring-shaped facilities, which are often several kilometers ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / Integrated land planning could ease food, energy and biodiversity conflicts worldwide

While the world is a big place, humans are making greater and greater demands on the same areas of land. "This means that, unless we use the same land to serve multiple needs and coordinate this effort through planning, it ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / Measurement of nuclear reactions at record-low energies opens new pathways for astrophysics research

An international research team has achieved an important milestone for astrophysics at GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt: In the CRYRING@ESR storage ring, scientists were able to measure nuclear reactions at extremely low energies for ...

Apr 30, 2026
Phys.org / Water molecules found to actively drive gene transcription process

Researchers have uncovered a previously hidden layer of complexity in how genes are activated, showing that water molecules play a direct and essential role in one of the most fundamental processes in biology: DNA transcription.

Apr 30, 2026