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. No, President Joe Biden did not engineer Hurricane Milton. No, the ice crystal contrails left behind by high-altitude aircraft are not "chemtrails" sprayed by governments to control the weather or manipulate populations. No, state-run cloud seeding did not cause the record floods in Dubai. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-artificially-dim-sun-scientists-theyre.html Environment Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:40:01 EDT news708702685 Election rumors, such as unverified accounts of voter fraud, have run rampant in the U.S. in recent years. Powered by the speed of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), it can be hard for people to know what messages to trust. Now, a team led by Caltech researchers is using AI as a tool for good in the fight against election misinformation. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-thwart-election-misinformation.html Political science Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:20:06 EDT news707050621 Mathematicians have shown that completely fair elections are—in a sense—impossible. No electoral system can guarantee both that local votes translate directly into local seats and that total seat distribution matches overall vote shares—not without an indefinitely growing parliament. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-math-vote.html Mathematics Fri, 31 Jul 2026 05:00:05 EDT news704551291 For years, social media companies have faced pressure from users and government watchdogs to stop misinformation from distorting elections, deepening political divisions and undermining Americans' trust in institutions. But what if dramatically reducing people's exposure to unreliable sources that frequently spread misinformation doesn't actually change what they believe? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-misinformation-facebook-instagram.html Social Sciences Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:20:08 EDT news704623622 Why do some people who embrace conspiracy theories simply hold those beliefs, while others act on them? A new study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology identifies three characteristics that help determine when conspiracy beliefs are most likely to shape real-world behavior: how certain people are that the belief is true, how personally important they consider it, and whether they see it as "actionable"—useful for deciding what to do. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-conspiracy-beliefs-action.html Social Sciences Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:20:08 EDT news704538721 The internet and social media platforms have given rise to a rising wave of misinformation, with many users now posting fake news, AI-generated photos or videos and other types of misleading content online. Over the past few years, this rise in misinformation has become a heated topic of debate, with some studies suggesting that it could influence voters during political elections. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-videos-blunt-misinformation-country.html Social Sciences Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:00:02 EDT news695900044 Conspiracy theories are one of the banes of the modern world, exacerbated by the internet and social media. What was once relegated to the fringe has now been pushed into the mainstream, actively shaping public discourse and policies. But why do so many people buy into these narratives even when they are contradicted by empirical facts? https://phys.org/news/2026-01-psychological-traits-fuel-conspiracy-theorist.html Social Sciences Mon, 05 Jan 2026 12:42:01 EST news686839199 A short interaction with a chatbot can meaningfully shift a voter's opinion about a presidential candidate or proposed policy in either direction, new Cornell University research finds. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ai-chatbots-effectively-sway-voters.html Political science Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:00:05 EST news683996701 Put on your tinfoil hats: New research finds that belief in conspiracy theories might be more common in the U.S. than you might think. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-people-conspiracy-theories.html Social Sciences Thu, 09 Oct 2025 12:06:03 EDT news679230361 In highly polarized situations, open communication is the only way to get through to people, including those who believe in conspiracy theories, revealed a new study in the British Journal of Political Science. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-communication-highly-polarized-audiences.html Social Sciences Mon, 06 Oct 2025 11:53:04 EDT news678970382 Overconfidence is a hallmark trait of people who believe in conspiracies, and they also significantly overestimate how much others agree with them, Cornell psychology researchers have found. The study indicates that belief in conspiracies may be less about a person's needs and motivations and more about their failure to recognize that they might be wrong. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-overconfident-conspiracy-theorists-unaware-beliefs.html Social Sciences Tue, 24 Jun 2025 13:04:38 EDT news669989072 Three consecutive years of drought contributed to the "Barbarian Conspiracy," a pivotal moment in the history of Roman Britain, a new Cambridge-led study in Climatic Change reveals. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-extreme-drought-contributed-barbarian-invasion.html Archaeology Thu, 17 Apr 2025 09:33:04 EDT news664101181 Explicit antisemitic language used online may be somewhat easy to spot, but implied or suggested meanings can be harder to identify and thus able to circumvent censorship and social stigma. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-subreddits-highlights-hidden-ways-speech.html Social Sciences Fri, 04 Apr 2025 08:51:03 EDT news662975461 A new study debunks claims that a magnitude 4.5 earthquake in Iran was a covert nuclear weapons test, as widely alleged on social media and some mainstream news outlets in October 2024, a period of heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-debunks-nuclear-misinformation-iran-earthquake.html Earth Sciences Tue, 04 Feb 2025 07:00:01 EST news657794822 A new study finds a sinister side to memes, pointing to their role in strengthening online communities of conspiracy theorists. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-memes-conspiracy-theories-online-groups.html Social Sciences Mon, 27 Jan 2025 12:51:03 EST news657204661 The more time you spend on social media, the likelier you are to have come across a viral post that seems too strange to be true. Brief scientific literacy interventions, especially those that focus on critical thinking skills, may help to undermine conspiracy beliefs and behaviors before the conspiracy theories have a chance to take root, according to a team led by Penn State researchers. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-scientific-literacy-interventions-quash-conspiracy.html Social Sciences Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:34:05 EST news652354441 Have you ever tried to convince a conspiracy theorist that the moon landing wasn't staged? You likely didn't succeed, but ChatGPT might have better luck, according to research by MIT Sloan School of Management professor David Rand and American University professor of psychology Thomas Costello, who conducted the research during his postdoctoral position at MIT Sloan. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-conversations-ai-successfully-belief-conspiracy.html Social Sciences Thu, 12 Sep 2024 14:00:02 EDT news645349861 A longstanding 'conspiracy' in astronomy—that stars and dark matter are interacting in inexplicable ways—has been overturned by an international team of astronomers, in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-galactic-conspiracy-disproven-dark-stars.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:39:03 EDT news643365541 A new genetic analysis by an international team of scientists has helped bust a popular 200-year-old myth surrounding Kaspar Hauser, whose identity became one of the most mysterious riddles in German history. The study is published in iScience as a pre-proof paper. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-dna-analysis-year-royal-conspiracy.html Biotechnology Thu, 01 Aug 2024 09:33:59 EDT news641723633 Owning cryptocurrency may be associated with certain personality and demographic characteristics as well as a reliance on alternative or fringe social media sources, according to a study published July 3, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Shane Littrell from the University of Toronto, Canada, along with colleagues from the University of Miami, U.S.. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-cryptocurrency-investors-dark-tetrad-personality.html Social Sciences Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:01 EDT news639216062 Conspiracy theorists get a bad rap in popular culture, yet research has shown that most Americans believe conspiracy theories of some sort. Why then, if most of us believe conspiracies, do we generally think of conspiracy theorists as loony? https://phys.org/news/2024-04-americans-bad-conspiracy-theories-theyre.html Social Sciences Mon, 08 Apr 2024 15:36:32 EDT news631809390 From 9/11 to COVID, researchers including La Trobe University's Dr. Mathew Marques, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, surveyed just shy of 500 Australians and New Zealanders over the course of six months to determine whether people change their minds frequently or stick tenaciously to their beliefs, regardless of what evidence they come across. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-people-beliefs-conspiracy-theories.html Social Sciences Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:01:03 EST news627562862 Twitter users in areas affected by major hurricanes discussed climate change much more frequently right after the hurricane, according to a study published November 23, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Maddalena Torricelli from the City University of London, UK, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-twitter-users-states-affected-hurricanes.html Social Sciences Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:00:03 EST news619178404 A new study explores themes in Twitter discussions of deepfake videos related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the potential for real videos to be mistaken for deepfakes and for deepfakes to fuel conspiracy theories. John Twomey of University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 25, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-deepfake-videos-russian-invasion-ukraine.html Social Sciences Wed, 25 Oct 2023 14:00:01 EDT news617447558 It doesn't take a scientist to know that a Facebook post bursting with party popper emojis or angry face symbols gets more reactions and shares than a flat, factual account of a child's graduation or an airline's villainous customer service. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-tracking-emotions-social-media-viral.html Social Sciences Fri, 13 Oct 2023 11:14:03 EDT news616414441 A team of behavioral scientists using big data and a simulation-based model to analyze social media "tweets" around the 2020 presidential election found that the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter (now called X) was boosted by a negativity bias. Led by Mason Youngblood, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University, the findings are published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-negative-retweets-voter-fraud-conspiracy.html Social Sciences Fri, 22 Sep 2023 14:30:05 EDT news614611802 Overconfidence has long been recognized as a critical problem in judgment and decision making. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-knowledge-great-confidence-reveals-relationship.html Social Sciences Thu, 14 Sep 2023 12:17:03 EDT news613912621 People who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to have antisemitic opinions than non-believers, new research shows. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-reveals-people-antisemitic-views.html Social Sciences Mon, 10 Jul 2023 15:16:02 EDT news608220961 People can be prone to believe in conspiracy theories due to a combination of personality traits and motivations, including relying strongly on their intuition, feeling a sense of antagonism and superiority toward others, and perceiving threats in their environment, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-simple-people-conspiracy-theories.html Social Sciences Mon, 26 Jun 2023 09:06:03 EDT news606989161 A new review of previously published studies on methods for reducing conspiracy beliefs has shown that most of these methods are ineffective, but that those focused on fostering critical thinking or an analytical mindset show some promise. Cian O'Mahony of University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on April 5. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-methods-ineffective-counteracting-conspiracy-beliefs.html Social Sciences Wed, 05 Apr 2023 14:00:04 EDT news599903892