https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The world's most powerful particle accelerator will shutter operations Monday for four years of renovations to dramatically boost its collision capacity and the potential for unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-world-largest-particle-smasher-halts.html General Physics Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:29:47 EDT news701792967 Using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), astronomers have discovered a new millisecond pulsar as part of the ongoing Southern-sky MWA Rapid Two-metre (SMART) survey. The discovery is reported in a research paper published June 17 on the arXiv preprint server. The work has also been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-millisecond-pulsar-murchison-widefield-array.html Astronomy Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:40:01 EDT news701407747 Howdy, pards, here's a quick roundup of the week's science news: Moose, previously thought to be a transplanted species, are actually native to Colorado. A digital twin of a two-year-old child's brain revealed neural signatures linked to autism. And a new gel treatment for severed spinal cords restored mobility in lab animals. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-saturday-citations-earthquakes-event-horizons.html Other Sat, 27 Jun 2026 09:10:01 EDT news701696929 Chiral 2D metal halide perovskites (MHPs) are among the most promising materials for future technologies that exploit the spin of electrons in spin-based optoelectronics, or spintronics, but getting them to perform consistently has proven difficult. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a data-driven approach that identifies and models key synthesis parameters to optimize their performance. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-roadmap-boost-gen-spintronics.html Condensed Matter Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:30:01 EDT news701626681 A study published in Nature Physics provides new molecular-level evidence from simulations that liquid water is not a single uniform substance, but a constantly shifting mixture of two distinct microscopic structures. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-molecular-evidence-liquid.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:20:03 EDT news701609342 Researchers at McMaster University have discovered what they describe as a "megacluster" of genes in Streptomyces bacteria that produces four antibiotics that work together to stop rival bacteria. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-megacluster-bacterial-genes-reveals-antibiotics.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:00:07 EDT news701596741 An international collaboration has discovered two of the lowest-density giant planets ever detected: rare "super-puff" planets with densities lower than candy floss. The study—led by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with Université Côte d'Azur/Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur and the University of Birmingham—has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-super-puff-planets-lighter-candy.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:10:02 EDT news701508781 At the end of every presidential term, the End of Term Web Archive preserves that administration's web presence as a vast trove of documents and webpages. The archive began in 2008, with George W. Bush's second term, and runs through 2024, collecting images, text, graphs, redacted pages and other media. So while it contains important public information, finding that information in the glut can prove difficult. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-web-archive-easily-millions-documents.html Political science Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:10:04 EDT news701539021 Magnetic fields are generally known to destroy superconductivity in a material. However, in exceptional cases, they can lead to what is known as "re-entrant superconductivity"—where superconductivity disappears as expected, but then unexpectedly returns when the magnetic field is increased further. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-magnetic-field-superconductivity.html Condensed Matter Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:00:02 EDT news701532785 Deep within the dark caves of northeastern Mexico lives a fish that has spent hundreds of thousands of years adapting to a world without light. The blind Mexican cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) has evolved in perpetual darkness, losing its eyes and pigmentation while developing remarkable adaptations that help it survive in nutrient-poor environments. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-darkness-mexican-cavefish-illuminate-brain.html Evolution Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:20:03 EDT news701531806 For just one day, our dark universe detective, Euclid, turned its gaze toward the light: the extremely bright inner region of our Milky Way galaxy, known as the galactic bulge. This special request came from astronomers who were after what Euclid does best: capturing huge areas of the sky in crisp detail. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-euclid-captures-million-stars-sharpest.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:40:01 EDT news701518093 An enigmatic new species of wormlion fly, whose larvae construct clever pitfall traps to capture prey, has been revealed in a study led by researchers at Dali University in China. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-giant-wormlion-fly-species-southern.html Plants & Animals Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:40:06 EDT news701516789 To function normally, nearly every cell in the human body relies on G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to receive and send signals. That's why GPCRs are targeted by roughly one-third of all FDA-approved drugs. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-key-molecules-arrestins-druggable-scientists.html Biotechnology Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:00:16 EDT news701443203 Multiferroics are materials that exhibit more than one prominent "ferroic" property, such as ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. One of their most advantageous features is that they allow engineers to control their magnetic states with electric fields or vice versa, due to an effect known as magnetoelectric coupling. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-interlayer-doping-room-temperature-multiferroics.html Condensed Matter Wed, 24 Jun 2026 08:40:01 EDT news701346383 Massive stars much bigger than our sun always come in pairs or groups, not alone. But astronomers don't fully understand how these groupings form. In a new study, astronomers using ALMA have serendipitously discovered a young system containing nine baby stars forming together, and they have detailed a rare glimpse of the formation of such a stellar family in its earliest assembly stage in a paper submitted to the arXiv preprint server on June 2. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-alma-member-stellar-family-formation.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:40:01 EDT news701342356 Researchers have developed a self-driving chemistry lab that can autonomously search through hundreds of catalyst recipes and reaction conditions to identify faster, more selective and more programmable ways to make important industrial chemicals. The work could accelerate catalyst discovery for industries ranging from pharmaceuticals and plastics to fuels and specialty chemicals. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-chemistry-lab-catalysts-products-demand.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:50:01 EDT news701450462 Many bat species emit echolocation calls and use the returning echoes to find their way, detect the presence of fluttering insects, and locate and catch them. A new study investigated this behavior in greater horseshoe bats foraging in the wild. An international team, including researchers from the University of Tübingen, "flew" with bats via GPS recording tags with microphones. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-horseshoe-echolocation-background-echoes-fluttering.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:20:07 EDT news701437262 Some fish swim in synchrony. Others, it turns out, breathe in synchrony. This is true for arapaimas, an obligate air-breathing species living in the Amazon. A new study in Communications Biology, led by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence," has demonstrated for the first time that arapaima juveniles gather by the hundreds to synchronize their trips to the water surface with split-second precision, most likely to avoid predators and maximize survival and efficiency. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-amazon-fish-reveal-synchronized-survival.html Ecology Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:40:07 EDT news701426461 When and where the next large earthquake will strike remains one of the most difficult questions in geoscience. Researchers from the GFZ Helmholtz Center for Geosciences led by Dr. Sadegh Karimpouli and Prof. Dr. Patricia Martínez-Garzón have now—together with international partners—developed a new data-driven approach that can identify characteristic changes in seismic activity before some major earthquakes occur. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hidden-seismicity-patterns-large-earthquakes.html Earth Sciences Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:00:03 EDT news701423401 Two cups of warm water don't make one cup of boiling water. But in the quantum world, multiple low-energy photons can combine to produce a single, higher-energy photon. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-solid-state-material-visible-high.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 23 Jun 2026 05:00:05 EDT news701347021 Gene editing of plant DNA has the potential to produce crops with increased performance and resilience, but it can take a long time to achieve these gains. To shorten this process, scientists often use screening tools to determine where and how edits to the plant genome can be most effective. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-leaf-based-fluorescence-gene.html Biotechnology Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:40:03 EDT news701362681 Tropical rainforest patches perched on isolated granite mountains in northern Mozambique have yielded four new species of sylvan chameleons, according to a new study by Prof. Krystal A. Tolley and Dr. Werner Conradie, recently published in Vertebrate Zoology. The new species have been named after animal behavior scientist and conservationist Jane Goodall, chemist Rosalind Franklin, and the concept of "vanishing," honoring scientific pioneers while sounding an alarm about disappearing habitats. The research reveals that each "sky island" harbors its own, previously unknown chameleon species and highlights the urgent need to conserve these fragile forest habitats. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-chameleon-species-mozambique-mountaintop-sky.html Plants & Animals Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:20:07 EDT news701358241 The biggest jump in body size among our ancestors happened around 2–2.5 million years ago, with the appearance of Homo rudolfensis or Homo erectus/ergaster, rather than gradually across the whole human family tree. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-idea-human-bodies-simply-bigger.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:00:14 EDT news701346721 Physicists have long suspected that a peculiar quantum state lurks inside a class of materials known as kagome metals, but proving its existence has been elusive. Now, a team led by Yeongkwan Kim at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has performed experiments on a kagome metal that provide the strongest evidence yet for this exotic state. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-broken-reversal-symmetry-phase-kagome.html Superconductivity Mon, 22 Jun 2026 13:40:10 EDT news701352617 Researchers are constantly sifting through new spectral data gathered by powerful telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Most of the time, when they identify spectral features—specific absorption or emission lines from different types of light gathered from a planet, moon or star—these features are known to be caused by certain atoms or molecules. For example, the emission line at 426.7 nanometers is known to come from singly ionized carbon, representing a specific atomic transition between energy states of a carbon ion. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-titan-pluto-mysterious-spectral-feature.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:04 EDT news701346373 An interstellar comet that blazed past the sun last year could be nearly three times older than our solar system and is unlike anything ever seen before in our cosmic backyard, astronomers said Monday. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-interstellar-visitor-3iatlas-billions-years.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:37:07 EDT news701346955 An international team of scientists led by Dr. Graciela Delvene of the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (CSIC) has uncovered the oldest known evidence of maternal care in shellfish, revealing that some freshwater species were protecting and incubating their young more than 125 million years ago. Published today in Scientific Reports, the new research found fossilized soft tissues preserved inside ancient shells. This is a remarkable discovery because such tissues normally decay soon after an animal dies. Among these tissues were microscopic embryos and larvae preserved within the gills. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-million-year-fossil-reveals-pregnant.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:00:09 EDT news701336881 Genes are not passed on exclusively from parents to their offspring. Some are mobile and can also jump to other species, as researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen have now shown. The direct observation of a jumping gene provides the first evidence that such genes can transfer from one species to another—from predator to prey. The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gene-caught-species.html Evolution Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:00:01 EDT news701017584 A researcher at Kyushu University and his collaborators have shown that continuous parameters in quantum gravity may not be freely adjustable "dials" from outside the theory, but rather arise from operators within the theory itself, supporting the century-old claim by Albert Einstein about the fundamental laws of nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-gravity-links-parameters-local.html General Physics Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:00:01 EDT news700921138 Aptamers are short DNA or RNA strands that can recognize and bind to a specific target molecule with high precision. Similar to antibodies, they can be used to detect these molecules or modulate their activity. Unlike antibodies, they are much more stable, can be produced synthetically and can be chemically modified to achieve the desired properties. As a result, they can offer capabilities that cannot be achieved with antibodies. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-faster-aptamer-screening-synthetic-alternatives.html Biochemistry Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:00:01 EDT news701014712