Phys.org news

Large-scale oyster reef restoration in the Chesapeake Bay is successfully creating three-dimensional habitats that support larger, more diverse fish communities, according to new research from scientists at the University ...

Bipedalism, or walking on two legs, is one of the key features that distinguishes humans from other apes. But when and why our ancestors transitioned from a life often spent in trees to a life spent almost exclusively on ...

Sir John Gage, a key figure in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, saved a dangerous Catholic book from likely destruction, a new study suggests. The identification of six lost pages of a medieval bestseller—illicitly ...

Oxford University researchers have captured the step-by-step assembly of individual virus-like particles, revealing how simple molecular interactions can reliably build these complex biological structures. The results were ...

A square peg doesn't fit a round hole. But what if the peg could change the shape of the hole? A newly developed drug molecule can do something surprisingly similar when binding to its target protein, according to a University ...

The biopolymer lignin—one of the most important carbon reservoirs in plants and soils—not only decays through fungi or bacteria but can also be chemically attacked by iron linked to reactive oxygen species, without the involvement ...

When a material heats up, its electrical resistance often rises. The harder question is what, exactly, is getting in the way. The electrons carrying the current may be scattered by vibrations of the material's atomic lattice, ...

Forty-four years ago, Nadrian Seeman published his groundbreaking ideas on using DNA as a structural material, expanding DNA's significance far beyond its role as a carrier of genetic information. Since then, the steadily ...

Dwarf galaxies—with a mass equal to about a billion suns, but often considerably less—are the most abundant in the universe. However, because of their low luminosity, they are very difficult to detect. They have mostly been ...

In March 2026, scientists succeeded in transporting antiprotons by road for the first time in a purpose-built trap loaded on a truck. The BASE collaboration, which realized this experiment at the European Organization for ...

Seasonal changes redistribute enough water around Earth to shift the planet's center of mass back and forth by fractions of an inch relative to its geometric center. NASA scientists are on the case, tracking the oscillations ...

Scientists have discovered several 518-million-year-old fossils that reshape understanding of the origins of the animal group containing starfish. The fossils show that these animals ate using tentacles rather than passively ...