Phys.org news

Phys.org / Powerful UFO spotted blasting from a distant black hole

Astronomers have detected one of the most powerful ultra-fast outflows ever seen from a distant supermassive black hole. Using XMM-Newton and NuSTAR, a team studied a hyper-luminous quasar at cosmic noon and found two distinct ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Third time's the charm for a row of faint galaxies without dark matter

A Yale-led team of astronomers has found a third galaxy devoid of dark matter—located alongside the other two in a formation that has never been seen before. Astronomers have followed a faint, cosmic trail of gas to a third ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / 'Geriatric' butterfly species lives nearly three times as long as their relatives

A tropical butterfly has evolved an ingenious anti-aging strategy by delaying the aging process, enabling it to live far longer than its closest relatives, according to a new University of Bristol-led study published in Nature ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Deep learning helps discover hundreds of Antarctic earthquakes coming from an unlikely location

Most of the earthquakes we hear about are due to tectonic plates colliding or sliding past each other near plate boundaries. Yet researchers have detected some enigmatic earthquakes happening inside the more stable interiors ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Super El Niños may lose their punch in a warming world

In a strong El Niño winter, normally dry regions can suddenly drown in rain. NASA notes that "typically dry regions can experience nearly two times as much rain during a strong El Niño." Indeed, the blockbuster El Niños of ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Dolphins know how to avoid troublesome males by listening for their 'names'

When female bottlenose dolphins want to avoid males known for pushy mating behaviors, they listen out for their unique signature whistles. That's the suggestion of a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Young disk around WRAY 15-1880 may contain a primitive planetary system

Italian astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to perform polarimetric observations of the star WRAY 15-1880 and its young circumstellar disk. Results of the new observations, presented June 10 on the arXiv ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / When glaciers vanish, so does the hidden life they support

We often hear about glacier melting and predictions of what climate change could do. But very little is mentioned about the effects on ecosystems or the animals that call them home. To redress some of this imbalance, an international ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Dark biodiversity helps solve Darwin's 160-year-old puzzle

An international research team, which included University of Tartu visiting doctoral student Wen-Gang Zhang and Professor of Botany Meelis Pärtel, has found a new solution to one of ecology's long-standing controversies—Darwin's ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Quantum hyperdimensional computing can work 500 times faster than other methods

Cleveland Clinic researchers are unlocking quantum computing's full potential through the creation of a new computing paradigm inspired by the human brain. Fabio Cumbo, Ph.D., research associate in the lab of Daniel Blankenberg, ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Webb and Hubble reveal the history of a relic of Milky Way's formation

Researchers using two of humanity's most powerful observatories—NASA's James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes—have definitively shown that Terzan 5 is not a globular star cluster, as it was once classified, offering new insight ...

Jun 16, 2026
Phys.org / Physicists identify upper limit to resistivity in a pure metal

Experimental atomic physicists have discovered there is a maximum amount of electrical resistance, or resistivity, that can result from collisions between electrons.

Jun 16, 2026