Phys.org news

As climate change alters the temperatures of animal habitats, it seems natural that endotherms, warm-blooded animals, would prefer to hang out in the shade during hot weather. The use of microhabitats in the sun and shade ...

Endangered basking sharks aren't fasting during long-distance migrations. A new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows that they may be foraging along the way, and in much deeper areas of the ocean than ...

The building‐block chemicals behind everyday products—like shampoo bottles, food containers, and kitchen spatulas—are largely derived from oil. Researchers are now working to replace those fossil‐fuel‐based inputs with materials ...

Conservationists often raise the young of endangered species in captivity before releasing them into suitable habitats as adults. The benefits are obvious: survival to adulthood is typically high, as captive animals are safe ...

A new study in Nature Communications finds a critical climate tipping point in Tibetan permafrost ecosystems. Warming of 2–4 degrees Celsius triggers a self-reinforcing cycle of carbon release that could significantly accelerate ...

Black holes, regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, have been widely studied over the past decades, due to their unique and intriguing properties. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts ...

For generations, scientists believed a queen honeybee was made almost entirely by diet: feed an ordinary larva enough royal jelly and a ruler emerges. But new research suggests queens are created through a more elaborate ...

Bryozoans are tiny, filter-feeding colonial invertebrates that thrive in the world's oceans today, yet for decades their origins presented a puzzling gap in the fossil record. While nearly every other major animal group made ...

The first comprehensive map of nearly the entire Greenland shark genome is beginning to reveal some of the genetic clues behind its incredibly long life. The work could one day help scientists develop new cures and treatments ...

Octopuses are remarkably intelligent creatures, as was demonstrated by Inky the Octopus's famous escape from the National Aquarium of New Zealand through a drainpipe back to sea in 2016. A new Dartmouth study shows octopuses ...

UNSW Sydney engineers have riffed on the famous Schrödinger's cat analogy to demonstrate a more efficient way to eliminate errors in quantum computing.

From planetary rovers and asteroid sample return missions to the recent Artemis II flight above the far side of the moon, we are seemingly good at doing space. But our achievements still do not match many of our space dreams, ...