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. Scientists have uncovered new evidence from one of Earth's most extreme ancient warming events, revealing how the climate may recover long after human-driven CO2 emissions cease. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-molecular-fossils-reveal-secrets-earth.html Earth Sciences Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:40:01 EDT news700918621 Arctic fjords are among the most efficient natural systems for absorbing and storing carbon long term. However, as the Arctic is warming about four times faster than the global average, fjord ecosystems are changing rapidly. Against this backdrop, understanding the biological processes that regulate carbon storage is becoming increasingly important. Yet the microbial mechanisms that control whether carbon is stored in sediments or returned to the environment are still not fully understood. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fungi-carbon-arctic-fjord-sediments.html Earth Sciences Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:00:01 EDT news700910822 Long before vertebrates walked on land, millipedes had the place to themselves. Hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs arrived, these early decomposers were helping establish Earth's terrestrial ecosystems. But despite their ancient history, scientists still hadn't fully unraveled their evolutionary story. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-evolutionary-history-millipede-dating-million.html Ecology Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:00:05 EDT news700480561 Mycorrhizal fungi form underground networks that sustain plant life and help regulate Earth's climate by drawing carbon into soils. In a study published in Science, an international team of researchers produced the first global maps estimating the distribution and mass of the Earth's arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-global-mycorrhizal-fungi-reveals-true.html Ecology Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:00:09 EDT news700398301 The asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs also created an underground environment suited to supporting new life, and new research suggests it lasted for millions of years longer than previously suspected. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-dino-asteroid-fueled-underground-life.html Astrobiology Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:20:02 EDT news700231012 This April, humanity had front-row seats to space as the Artemis II Orion spacecraft transmitted crystal-clear footage of its historic journey around the moon from more than 250,000 miles (about 402,000 kilometers) back to Earth at speeds on par with home internet connections. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-artemis-ii-livestreamed-def-videos.html Space Exploration Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:40:03 EDT news700133941 Decomposers are crucial for keeping Earth habitable, breaking down dead biomass and returning key nutrients, such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, to the ecosystem. Most decomposers, including fungi, survive through osmotrophy—a means of feeding by absorbing dissolved nutrients rather than engulfing prey. But how this method of feeding repeatedly arose across the eukaryotic tree of life remains unclear. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gene-swapping-planet-decomposers.html Ecology Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:20:01 EDT news699875427 An international team of scientists has discovered that plants are not responding to global warming in the way researchers long assumed. Scientists have expected that ecosystems would keep pace with warming by raising the temperature at which photosynthesis works best. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-boost-carbon-uptake-efficiency-global.html Earth Sciences Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:40:03 EDT news699718621 The weather on Earth can get pretty messy sometimes. But in space, it can be wild, and the effects can be far-reaching. Solar flares, giant explosions on the sun, can send out streams of energy that block radio communications and fry satellite electronics. Geomagnetic storms, caused by variations in solar wind, can mess with GPS signals and spark current surges on Earth that overload power grids. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-space-weather.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:00:01 EDT news699718021 By studying life deep inside a former gold mine, a Northwestern University-led team of scientists has uncovered evidence that Earth's hidden biosphere operates less like a random collection of microbes and more like an organized workforce. In one of the most comprehensive long-term studies of deep underground microbial life to date, the researchers tracked how microbial communities shifted across six sites over four years. From site to site, the ecosystems were incredibly different from one another but largely stable through time. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-microbial-guilds-earth-underground-biosphere.html Ecology Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:00:03 EDT news699613577 Four-and-a-half billion years ago, a massive world—possibly as big as the moon or even Mars—orbited our sun before crashing into another celestial body and shattering into rubble. Now, in a paper published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, scientists report the first definitive evidence that this lost planetary embryo (protoplanet) existed. Its unique geological makeup challenges long-held assumptions about how planets evolve. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-rare-meteorite-evidence-giant-early.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:10:01 EDT news699632881 A new raptor-like dinosaur from some 70 million years ago that ate fish and behaved like modern herons has been unearthed from southern Patagonia. The new species, which has been named Kank australis, was identified based on the discovery of fossil remains including teeth, vertebrae, and toe bones. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-heron-fish-dinosaur-million-years.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 28 May 2026 19:10:06 EDT news699176102 On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA's AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nasa-awe-instrument-mission-earth.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 21 May 2026 19:20:04 EDT news698599201 For decades, environmental debates have been framed around a stark trade-off: economic growth lifts people out of poverty but comes at the expense of forests, wildlife, and climate stability. More people and richer diets mean more farmland and less nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-economic-growth-income-countries-biodiversity.html Environment Wed, 20 May 2026 17:20:01 EDT news698507521 The sight of a saltwater crocodile basking on a mudbank is one of the most iconic and intimidating images of northern Australia. Yet the crocodiles that inhabit the region today are just the survivors of a much richer and stranger lost world. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-years-crocodiles-australasia-ancient-apex.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 20 May 2026 14:40:07 EDT news698499640 Governments around the world conserve plants and animals in part by setting aside land. Whether as wilderness reserves or as resource management zones that allow industrial activities such as logging, 17.4% of the planet's land offers some measure of protection. These protected areas overlap with one-fifth, on average, of the range of Earth's terrestrial mammals. But beneath these parched deserts, dark forests, and rolling grasslands is an invisible world that keeps these aboveground places healthy. And we're not protecting that world much at all. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-areas-wildlife-soil-fungi.html Ecology Tue, 19 May 2026 17:40:03 EDT news698424721 For decades, the search for life beyond Earth has revolved around a key question: What molecules should scientists be looking for on other planets or moons? A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, suggests that the more revealing clue may not be the molecules themselves, but the hidden order connecting them. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-alien-life-mars-europa-missions.html Astronomy Mon, 11 May 2026 17:00:05 EDT news697733705 Using MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of researchers led by former MPIA (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany) Ph.D. student Sebastian Zieba (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, U.S.) and Laura Kreidberg, MPIA Director and study PI (principal investigator), analyzed the surface composition of the rocky exoplanet LHS 3844 b. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-astronomers-explore-surface-composition-nearby.html Astronomy Mon, 04 May 2026 05:00:01 EDT news696851882 Dinosaurs are among the most majestic and iconic animals to have ever walked on our planet. While they are now extinct, they are estimated to have inhabited Earth for over 165 million years. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-dinosaurs-million-years-earlier-fossils.html Evolution Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:01 EDT news696675541 Unfortunately for science fiction fans, desert worlds outside our solar system are unlikely to host life, according to new research from the University of Washington. Scientists show that an Earth-sized planet needs at least 20 to 50% of the water in Earth's oceans to maintain a critical natural cycle that keeps water on the surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-planets-life-scientists-previously-thought.html Astrobiology Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:40:03 EDT news695485502 Elements essential to life, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, were "delivered" to Earth and the moon during the early stages of the solar system via asteroids and comets impacting their surfaces. These exogenous materials may have provided the chemical building blocks necessary for the origin and early evolution of life on Earth. But extensive geological activity and biological processes on Earth have largely erased the direct records of these early inputs on our planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-mission-samples-reveal-exogenous-evolves.html Astrobiology Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:40:03 EDT news695047248 Astronomers have discovered that a giant planet, WASP-189b, echoes the composition of its host star, providing the first direct evidence of a foundational concept in astrobiology. This discovery was achieved through the first-ever simultaneous measurement of gaseous magnesium and silicon in a planet's atmosphere. The team used the Gemini South telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-gemini-south-link-composition-exoplanets.html Astrobiology Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:40:07 EDT news694274600 In 2024, NASA's Perseverance rover found surprising levels of Nickel in the Martian bedrock of an ancient river channel, called Neretva Vallis, which flowed into the Jezero crater. A new study, published in Nature Communications, has taken a closer look at the data collected from the region and researchers are seeing what could be remnants of ancient Martian life. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-high-nickel-martian-bedrock-potential.html Astrobiology Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:20:09 EDT news694274606 Saturn's magnetic shield is asymmetrical compared to Earth's, suggests a new study involving University College London (UCL) researchers, and this is likely a result of its fast rotation coupled with the heavy material it pulls around it. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-saturn-magnetic-lopsided-earth.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 01 Apr 2026 05:00:01 EDT news694164301 Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting TOI-4616—a nearby M-dwarf star. The newfound alien world, which received designation TOI-4616 b, is slightly larger than Earth. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 11 on the arXiv pre-print server. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-tess-earth-sized-planet-orbiting.html Astronomy Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:50:01 EDT news693564728 With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA's Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS, is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy's most common stars to help answer one of humanity's most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable? https://phys.org/news/2026-03-nasa-tiny-spacecraft-exoplanet-images.html Astronomy Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:02:08 EDT news692542793 We all know that stars radiate light and much more. But radiation belts can also surround many other celestial bodies, such as planets. These belts do not generate particles themselves—the belts receive them from nearby stars—but they accelerate the speed of particles in a way that has remained elusive. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-upper-limit-planetary-belt-intensity.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:40:05 EDT news692372757 Life on Earth started in the oceans. Sometime around 475 million years ago, plants began making their way from the water onto the land, and it took another 100 million years for the first animals with backbones to join them. But for tens of millions of years, these early land-dwelling creatures only ate their fellow animals, rather than grazing on greenery. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-football-sized-fossil-creature-animals.html Evolution Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:04:45 EST news689940242 Some tropical land regions may warm more dramatically than previously predicted, as climate change progresses, according to a new CU Boulder study that looks millions of years into Earth's past. Using lake sediments from the Colombian Andes, researchers reveal that when the planet warmed millions of years ago under carbon dioxide levels similar to today's, tropical land heated up nearly twice as much as the ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-tropical-oceans-climate-sediment.html Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:12 EST news689266441 Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require intense heat to form and these "dirty snowballs" spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-webb-young-sun-star-forging.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:55:41 EST news688229701