Phys.org news

Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants, and approximately 10% of flowering plants are functionally specialized for buzz pollination. Buzz pollination is a mechanism in which pollen can be extracted from ...

The sights and sounds of the Jurassic era are long gone, and we will never know for sure what that ancient world looked and sounded like. Fossils can offer clues, and reconstructions can give us a sense of the noises some ...

Researchers have discovered a thermal asymmetry deep beneath the surface across Mars' southern hemisphere. Based on gravitational measurements that provide clues to the Red Planet's interior structure, Mars' southern interior ...

Scientists have identified an unexpected source of genetic variation in human sperm that occurs earlier in sperm development than previously thought. Published in Nature, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the ...

Blinking keeps eyes moist, sweeps away bits of dirt and dust, and helps the brain rest when processing visual information. But in dogs, it may also serve another function as a subtle social signal. That was one of the conclusions ...

Detecting short-wave infrared (SWIR) light, a region of the electromagnetic spectrum just beyond the light visible to the human eye, could be advantageous for many real-world applications. For instance, it could enable more ...

The Roman Space Telescope is designed to directly image exoplanets using complex optomechanical systems developed by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

Imagine the Western Plains of North America, from Texas to Alaska, submerged under a broad, shallow seaway. To the west lay the ancestral Rocky Mountains. To the east were low-lying plains traversed by large, sluggish rivers.

Efficiently controlling heat generation has become a major challenge as the semiconductors used in smartphones, computers and similar devices have become higher-performing and more miniaturized. The way heat is transmitted ...

An international study led by researchers at the George Washington University indicates clear global evidence that permafrost is thawing across much of the planet. Using more than two decades of field observations from 156 ...

Saturn's moon Enceladus sports a thick shell of ice surrounding a liquid water ocean. As though scraped by an enormous claw, four parallel cracks slash across its south pole. Each about 500 meters (1,600 feet) deep, 2 kilometers ...

Unlike conventional glaciers, rock glaciers appear as piles of rock that obscure large masses of unaccounted-for ice. Rock glaciers are common in the Wasatch and Uinta ranges, even appearing on the Colorado Plateau in the ...