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. Research led by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, along with Professor Subir Sarkar from the University of Oxford, questions the widely accepted argument that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating and that this is driven by "dark energy" arising from the quantum vacuum. Their letter has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pantheon-analysis-supernovae-universe.html Astronomy Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:50:03 EDT news701367841 Just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe was a dark and simple place. There were no galaxies like the Milky Way, no planets, and no heavy elements such as carbon or oxygen. Instead, vast clouds of primordial hydrogen and helium drifted through space, slowly falling into invisible cocoons of dark matter known as "minihalos." Within these halos, the very first stars—called Population III stars—were born. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-primordial-halo-simulations-reveal-cosmic.html Astronomy Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:20:06 EDT news701347681 A stunningly concentrated and hefty galaxy cluster, from a time in the universe's history when such massive structures aren't expected to have fully formed yet, is challenging cosmic evolution theories. Across a series of three recent papers, a team led by researchers from IPAC—a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech—have revealed that the cluster is the most distant example of strong gravitational lensing with a galaxy cluster. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jwst-images-abnormally-galaxy-cluster.html Astronomy Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:20:01 EDT news701089598 Dr. Shing-Chi Leung, assistant professor of physics at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has published the article "Primordial Black Hole Triggered Type Ia Supernovae II: Comparison with Supernova Remnants and Galactic Chemical Evolution" in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper was co-authored by SUNY Poly student Seth Walther, a senior majoring in electrical and computer engineering and applied mathematics with a minor in physics; Alexander Kusenko (UCLA); Ken'ichi Nomoto (Kavli IPMU, recipient of the 2026 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2026 Gruber Cosmology Prize); and Tomoharu Suzuki (Chubu University). https://phys.org/news/2026-06-supernova-explored-primordial-black-holes.html Astronomy Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:20:06 EDT news700916762 A University of Birmingham scientist has built a "mini-universe" that takes a step toward answering one of science's biggest questions: "What is time?" Publishing his findings in Physical Review Research, Professor Giovanni Barontini shows how it is possible to measure the flow of time without using a clock at all. The new findings provide a scientific model in which a version of time emerges from the experiment itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientist-miniuniverse-clock.html General Physics Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:20:01 EDT news700487646 Our universe's expansion is still accelerating despite recent claims suggesting otherwise, an international team of astrophysicists says. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cosmic-analysis-rebuts-slowdown.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:00:02 EDT news700313642 The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot's spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-black-hole-stars-webb-strongest.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:40:03 EDT news700313821 A study in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics explores how a machine-learning strategy known as transfer learning could dramatically reduce the computational cost of searching for new physics beyond the standard cosmological model—while also revealing an unexpected risk: Sometimes AI systems can become too reliant on what they already know. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-physics-ai-unlearn.html General Physics Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:01 EDT news700213321 A new theoretical study may have cracked one of the most puzzling discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Little Red Dots, spotted across the early universe. The paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server on May 29, argues that these objects could be black holes caught in rare, violent bursts of feeding at a rate exceeding theoretical limits. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-black-hole-jwst-red-dots.html Astronomy Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:20:03 EDT news700134702 A supermassive black hole lies at the heart of every galaxy, including the Milky Way. When a black hole is active, it pulls material in as a whirlpool of high-temperature gas and dust. As this cosmic material piles up and falls onto a black hole, it lights up its vicinity, radiating a huge amount of energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-astronomers-earliest-flickering-quasar.html Astronomy Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:04:52 EDT news700135106 Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime. Their first direct detection in 2015 marked a revolutionary moment in astronomy. Today, we have a thorough understanding of signals that travel far from their sources through quiet, nearly empty space, such as those emitted when black holes merge. In this case, the wave can be considered a minor disturbance on a silent background. The distinction between "background" and "wave" is clear, and the quantity measured by the detector—a tiny stretching and squeezing—is clearly determined. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gravitational-universe-free-approach.html General Physics Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:40:03 EDT news699806881 The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and "weighed" by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL. The study, published in Science, identified a dormant black hole at the heart of a galaxy known as MRG-M0138 located over 10 billion light years away. It is the most distant dormant black hole yet detected, 15 times farther away than the previous record. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jwst-dormant-black-hole-billion.html Astronomy Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:00:11 EDT news699784502 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 that black holes obey a set of rules, known as the laws of black hole mechanics. These rules somewhat resemble the laws of thermodynamics, which delineate how energy, heat, and entropy behave in our universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-violating-3rd-law-black-hole.html General Physics Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:00:04 EDT news699524996 It's tricky to make an exact copy of yourself. Or at least it is for cells undergoing mitosis, where cells replicate everything inside of them, including their neatly packaged DNA, then split in half. Rice University professor Peter Wolynes is interested in how the packaged DNA, called a chromosome, changes its structure during replication, going from a ball shape to a cylinder shape that can be transported easily to the daughter cell. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-chromosome-links-steady-motor-shift.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 29 May 2026 12:00:03 EDT news699268719 Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-dark-energy-equation-mathematicians-standard.html Astronomy Thu, 28 May 2026 13:20:06 EDT news699190321 Researchers from the University of Glasgow's Institute for Gravitational Research are celebrating the publication of a vast new treasure trove of gravitational wave detections, hailed as a milestone marking the coming of age of gravitational astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-ligovirgokagra-precision-gravitational-astronomy.html Astronomy Tue, 26 May 2026 13:20:11 EDT news699015182 Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, have identified a promising new method for measuring the mass of galaxies orbiting the Milky Way by using pulsars, some of the universe's most precise natural clocks, to detect tiny gravitational effects across our galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-pulsars-ultra-precise-gravitational-probes.html Astronomy Fri, 22 May 2026 12:40:04 EDT news698666582 Dark matter is an elusive form of matter that almost never emits, absorbs or reflects light, while only weakly interacting with regular matter. These properties make it very difficult to detect using conventional experimental techniques and instruments. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-intrinsic-quantum-effects-axion-dark.html General Physics Fri, 22 May 2026 08:10:02 EDT news698581195 Cosmologists have long struggled to determine whether the universe's accelerating expansion is being driven by a simple cosmological constant, or whether dark energy's influence is evolving over time. In a new analysis published in Physical Review D, Samsuzzaman Afroz and Suvodip Mukherjee at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, have identified a subtle impact on the inference of the nature of dark energy, due to a tiny mismatch between a fundamental cosmological distance relation and two key datasets used to measure the properties of dark energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-evolving-dark-energy.html Astronomy Tue, 19 May 2026 07:30:01 EDT news698316441 We may be more in the dark about dark matter than previously thought, according to a new analysis of distant galaxy clusters. Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, a leading theorist on the nature of black holes and dark matter, says new observational data conflicts with certain assumptions about cold dark matter (CDM)—unseen, slow-moving particles that are inferred by their effect on gravity—and may prompt a fundamental rethinking of dark matter by scientists. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-qa-dark.html Astronomy Thu, 14 May 2026 16:55:12 EDT news697996441 The largest-ever survey of physicists from around the world—released today—shows a distinct lack of consensus across many of physics's most important questions, from the nature of black holes and dark matter, to the still-incomplete unification of Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-largest-survey-physicists-standard-cosmology.html General Physics Tue, 12 May 2026 19:20:06 EDT news697817041 Cornell astronomers are deploying a new instrument that grants them, for the first time, a better view of the universe's earliest galaxies, which can't be observed individually with traditional ground- or space-based telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-instrument-faint-early-galaxies-vast.html Astronomy Tue, 12 May 2026 17:00:10 EDT news697815721 Dark matter particles could be mediators of the interaction between electrons and atomic nuclei, as shown by a study conducted by junior group leader, Dr. Konstantin Gaul, Dr. Lei Cong, and Professor Dr. Dmitry Budker, of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) and the PRISMA++ Cluster of Excellence. Their work, published last week in Physical Review Letters, presents new constraints on previously unexplored candidates for dark matter and, more generally, some hypothetical particles that are not included in the Standard Model of particle physics (SM). https://phys.org/news/2026-05-unexplored-interactions-electrons-atomic-nuclei.html General Physics Mon, 11 May 2026 19:40:01 EDT news697736521 Astronomers have employed the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) and the MeerKAT radio telescope to observe a galaxy cluster known as RXCJ0232–4420. Results of the new observations, published April 29 on the arXiv pre-print server, deliver important insights into the nature of this cluster. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-radio-telescopes-million-year-halo.html Astronomy Sun, 10 May 2026 14:00:02 EDT news697448337 Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Puzzlingly, supermassive black holes more than a billion times the mass of the sun appear to exist just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than 5% of its current age. As interstellar gas spirals towards such black holes, it accelerates to extreme speeds, heats up, and emits intense radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, creating a "quasar." https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quasars-star-formation-early-universe.html Astronomy Wed, 06 May 2026 16:10:01 EDT news697300142 An international team led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has developed a new method that could significantly improve our understanding of the expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-universe-sharpen-cosmic-expansion-dark.html Astronomy Wed, 06 May 2026 15:50:02 EDT news697299722 The concept of spacetime, first described in Einstein's theory of general relativity, has since been widely studied by many physicists worldwide. Spacetime is described mathematically as a four-dimensional (4D) continuum in which physical events occur, which merges three-dimensional (3D) space, with one-dimensional (1D) time. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-frozen-gravity-evolution-spacetime-dynamics.html General Physics Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:01 EDT news696675372 Understanding the universe as a whole requires simulations on cosmic scales. An international team of astrophysicists, with a leading role for researchers at Leiden University, Netherlands, has now released one of the largest cosmological simulation datasets ever produced. The dataset contains more than 2.5 petabytes of simulation data—roughly equivalent to half a million HD movies. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-astronomers-massive-virtual-universes-global.html Astronomy Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:00:02 EDT news696585421 Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies—tiny satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way—have long been seen as cosmic fossils. Now, a new study published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses an unprecedented set of simulations to show just how powerfully these faint systems can reflect the conditions of the early universe and tell us why some galaxies grew and others did not. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-milky-cousins-clues-infant-universe.html Astronomy Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:00:03 EDT news696167281 Only about 5% of the universe is composed of normal matter that we can directly observe, while the remaining 95% is widely believed to consist of dark matter and dark energy. Paradoxically, however, the nature of these dark components remains unknown. Is this due to limitations in our observational capabilities, or does it reflect a more fundamental incompleteness in the classical laws of physics that have long underpinned our understanding of the universe? https://phys.org/news/2026-04-decoherence-gravity-dark-energy-quantum.html General Physics Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:30:01 EDT news696002430