Phys.org news

Phys.org / Single amino acid swap expands nanoparticle vaccine approach to influenza viruses

Influenza viruses constantly shapeshift to evade recognition by the immune system. This shapeshifting occurs in critical proteins like hemagglutinin (HA), which controls how the virus attaches to human cells before entering ...

23 hours ago
Phys.org / Muddying the waters makes stickleback fish more coordinated, study finds

Stickleback fish can change their social behavior to help them find food in cloudy water, according to a new University of Bristol study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

23 hours ago
Phys.org / Geomagnetic superstorm shook GPS accuracy across the US—its timing may have averted agricultural losses

On Nov. 11, 2025, Earth experienced a severe geomagnetic storm triggered by solar flares and coronal mass ejections from an active sunspot region. While this kind of storm brings beautiful auroras admired in many areas around ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / A supermassive black hole erupted in X-rays, and its radio jets followed 300 days later

By combining roughly two decades of observations from NASA's Swift X-ray Telescope with radio monitoring, astronomers have caught a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Perseus Cluster suddenly flaring in X-rays, and ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / Switching gravity on and off leaves particles behind, mathematical model finds

Hawking radiation causes black holes to eventually evaporate. This is because particle pairs are spontaneously created near the event horizon (the position of the last ray of light that can escape the black hole's gravitational ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / Resin-mounted wallaby teeth reveal rare 1,200-year-old ornaments in Queensland

While sorting through animal bones in a rock shelter in Queensland, Australia, archaeologists came across a tooth where something was "not quite right." Stuck to the tip of its root was a blackish-brown ball of glue-like ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / Saturn encounter may have set distant centaur on path to becoming a comet

More than 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, an ancient icy object is slowly awakening. As it drifts inward through the solar system, the frozen body known as Centaur 450P/LONEOS has begun releasing gas ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / In tune with nature: Human speech follows a rhythm that is also found in the animal kingdom

The temporal structure of speech rhythms resembles that of the communication signals of numerous animal species. This is shown by a study conducted by a research team from the Leibniz Center for General Linguistics (ZAS) ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / MeerKAT directly detects faint hydrogen signal from the distant universe

Astronomers from the University of Manchester and the University of the Western Cape have directly detected an extremely faint radio signal from hydrogen gas billions of light-years away, opening a powerful new way to map ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / First measurement of low-energy solar neutrinos scattering off electrons

Every second, tens of billions of neutrinos produced by nuclear fusion in the sun pass through every square centimeter of Earth—and through our bodies—almost without interacting. Although they are among the most abundant ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / Old-growth tropical forests bear lasting legacy of ancient Maya civilization

Rainforests in Central America that have remained largely untouched by modern human activities could bear the invisible imprint of ancient Maya civilizations. New research has found that forest structure in Belize, such as ...

Sep 1, 2026
Phys.org / Watching nanoparticles form in real time uncovers 'missing link' in microwave-assisted manufacturing

Advanced materials power everything from batteries and electronics to clean energy technologies. For years, engineers have known that microwave-assisted synthesis can dramatically accelerate the chemical reactions used to ...

Sep 1, 2026