Phys.org news
Phys.org / Why doesn't Venus have a moon? A new study may have the answer
Venus is one of the solar system's most unusual planets. It may sometimes be called "Earth's twin" because of its similar size and density, but it rotates on its axis in the opposite direction of most planets, has surface ...
Phys.org / Salt may have helped turn Earth into a frozen world 700 million years ago
Earth may have been pushed deeper into a global deep freeze by something surprisingly ordinary: salt. Around 700 million years ago, Earth entered periods of extreme glaciation known as Snowball Earth, when ice is thought ...
Phys.org / Away from grand temples, a recycled Bronze Age burial mound became the focus of a Roman religious complex
The Romans were master engineers, building sprawling road networks, towering aqueducts and arenas across their empire. They were also good at recycling. New research has revealed that they turned the remains of a 4,000-year-old ...
Phys.org / A pair of spacecraft draw closer to Mercury after nearly decade-long voyage
Two Mercury-bound spacecraft left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home stretch of their nearly decade-long voyage to the solar system's smallest and closest-to-the-sun planet.
Phys.org / The biggest black hole merger ever observed could be less massive than it appears
Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime created when pairs of black holes spiral into each other and eventually merge. But if this ripple has been warped by another massive object on its way to Earth, a new analysis ...
Phys.org / Completing the connectome: How pursuing a map of the fly brain rewired neuroscience
When researchers at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus set out to create a map of all the neurons in the fruit fly brain in 2008, many in the scientific community thought they were out of their minds.
Phys.org / AI suggests new physics experiments that could outperform human-designed setups
Research means asking questions of the universe. For centuries, clever minds have advanced science by devising ingenious experiments designed so their results reveal something about the laws of nature as clearly and unambiguously ...
Phys.org / Heat has a memory—and a new theoretical framework can track it
Heat, it turns out, has a memory. A cooling cup of coffee may not seem particularly thoughtful. At the scale of a kitchen, heat appears to follow a straightforward rule: it moves from warmer places to cooler ones. Leave the ...
Phys.org / Ancient DNA suggests western farming reached Gansu without mass migration
A multidisciplinary study has answered key questions about how agricultural practices diffused into ancient Gansu from Eurasia, as well as described population movements and burial practices in the Gansu region thousands ...
Phys.org / How stressed cells put the brakes on protein 'shipping'
Cells synthesize proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and these proteins are transported to the Golgi apparatus for distribution to their ultimate destinations inside and outside the cell. The structures that transport ...
Phys.org / Surf's up: How the seafloor shapes breaking waves
A new study led by surfing scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego revealed the physical relationships underlying a pattern familiar to generations of surfers.
Phys.org / Microbial 'dark matter' yields 173 potential carbon dioxide-fixing strains
There are millions of species of bacteria and archaea on Earth, remarkably little is known about most of them. Now, researchers have mined the genomes of thousands of microorganisms preserved at the RIKEN BioResource Research ...
