Phys.org news

Optical fibers are already the backbone of global communication systems. Recently, however, physicists have started to explore how their functionality could be boosted further by conveying information via entangled quantum ...

A team of researchers reports that they may have found rock containing some of the earliest forms of microbial life on Earth. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the biosignatures ...

Between 29,000 and 19,000 years ago, the planet experienced some of its coldest temperatures and drastic landscape changes at the peak of the Ice Age, during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the period of most extensive global ...

So far, most of the minerals found on Mars tell a story of lava poured out by ancient volcanoes, followed by long stretches in which water trickled through and slowly reshaped the rock. However, some rocks scattered across ...

Recent advances in our understanding of human evolution challenge the way we currently name and classify our ancestors, according to new research from Monash University. The study, published in the American Journal of Biological ...

Quantum sensors, devices that collect measurements by exploiting quantum-mechanical phenomena, could potentially detect extremely weak magnetic, gravitational and electromagnetic signals with greater sensitivity than classical ...

Superconductors are materials in which electrical current flows with a resistance of zero, typically below specific temperatures. In conventional superconductors, this state of matter emerges when two electrons bind together ...

Biologists, zoologists and psychologists have been trying to trace the origins of human language for centuries. One well-known theory, known as the social brain hypothesis, suggests that increasingly complex social lives ...

Between Aug. 11–12, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of a new crater on the moon. The crater formed Aug. 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the surface following its Jan. 2025 ...

To commercialize quantum computing, manufacturers need high-quality superconducting materials for microchips, but they also require a reliable, sustainable nanofabrication process. Tantalum is a corrosion-resistant metal ...

Astronomers have uncovered a previously underexplored population of faint, rapidly fading remnant radio galaxies, offering new insights into what happens after supermassive black holes stop powering their enormous radio jets.

Every cell in the body contains essentially the same DNA, yet a brain cell behaves differently from a muscle cell or an immune cell. The difference lies largely in how each cell reads its genetic instructions.