Phys.org news

Between 750 and 900 CE, the population of the Maya lowlands in Central America experienced a major demographic and political decline which, according to the scientific literature, coincided with repeated episodes of intense ...

Modern Chileans are significantly taller and have larger heads than their ancestors. That's the central finding of new research looking at how intracranial volume (ICV) has changed across thousands of years in northern Chile. ...

In spaces smaller than a wavelength of light, electric currents jump from point to point and magnetic fields corkscrew through atomic lattices in ways that defy intuition. Scientists have only ever dreamed of observing these ...

For decades, physicists have dreamed of a quantum internet: a planetary web of ultrasecure communications and super-powered computation built not from electrical signals, but from the ghostly connections between particles ...

Using the Large Phased Array (LPA) and the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), astronomers from Russia and China have observed a nearby pulsar designated PSR J1951+2837. The new observations, presented ...

Flight is a rare skill in the animal world. Among vertebrates, it evolved only three times: in bats, birds, and the long-extinct pterosaurs. Pterosaurs were the pioneers, taking to the skies more than 220 million years ago, ...

The male Lady Amherst's pheasant knows how to put on a show when it comes to attracting mates. As well as elaborate courtship displays, they will unfurl their golden feathers to form a cape around their neck, which can prove ...

With a new study in the journal Cell, researchers at Stanford University and Stockholm University have contributed to increased knowledge about gene regulation in human cells.

A telescope in Chile has captured a stunning new picture of a grand and graceful cosmic butterfly.

One of the most comprehensive surveys to date of shark and other large predator fish in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) ocean finds that remote marine protected areas (MPAs)—including the Galapagos, Malpelo, Clipperton, ...

We are producing more textiles than ever before: worldwide, well over one hundred million tons of textiles are manufactured every year—more than twice as much as in the year 2000. This makes it increasingly important not ...

Located in the middle of the South Pacific, thousands of miles from the nearest continent, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth. To visit it and marvel at the quarries where its iconic ...