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. A rocky lava planet once thought to be too extreme to have an atmosphere appears to be wrapped in one with a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-clouds-lava-planet-astronomers.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:20:01 EDT news712234995 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Nancy Roman Space Telescope are revealing the universe's earliest chapters in detail. To help astronomers understand what they are seeing, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed "Lumina," one of the largest and most detailed simulations ever created of the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-lumina-simulation-early-universe-life.html Astronomy Sun, 25 Oct 2026 20:10:01 EDT news711978901 An international study involving ICTA-UAB reveals that large energy corporations use corporate sustainability narratives to legitimize wind, solar and hydropower projects that, in practice, exclude communities from fair economic and financial returns and ignore the projects' social and environmental impacts. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-dark-side-energy-transition-renewable.html Economics & Business Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:40:02 EDT news711894001 In this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope, we visit a turbulent cauldron of star formation to see what is brewing inside dense clumps of gas. This is a star-forming region named LHA 120-N 159, or simply N159, located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. This image spans about 230 light-years across. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-webb-image-reveals-young-stars.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:40:01 EDT news711892283 It looks like a small, transparent patch with a rainbow on its surface—or for those old enough to remember, the back of a CD. The patch is the first of its kind in the world and, when combined with an ordinary smartphone camera, can measure two things: pulse and blood vessel stiffness. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-octopus-patch-skin-reveals-pulse.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 20 Oct 2026 10:00:16 EDT news711705901 You sit down to meditate. A conversation returns, then thoughts. You bring your attention back to the breath. Sometimes, after many such returns, the effort eases. Thoughts lose their urgency, while awareness remains clear. Less occupies the mind, yet the moment still feels whole. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-meditation-reveal-su3-symmetry-universe.html General Physics Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:40:08 EDT news711105159 NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the universe, Epoch of Reionization, and ices Explorer) space telescope is shedding light on brown dwarfs, celestial objects that blur the line between stars and exoplanets. New findings published in The Astrophysical Journal show that these dark and cloudy worlds have chemically rich atmospheres not unlike the giant planets in our own solar system. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-spherex-menagerie-brown-dwarfs-atmospheric.html Astronomy Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:20:05 EDT news710755921 Favorite songs can stay with us for a lifetime, but their shelf life on the music charts is fleetingly short. Tracks that shoot up the U.S. Billboard charts may flood the airwaves for a short while, but just a few weeks later, they have vanished. The outlook for albums is far more enduring, according to a new paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-songs-faster-billboard-albums.html Social Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:20:15 EDT news710511843 Galaxies are enormous and hold hundreds of billions of stars. These stars form from cold, dense gas. Every large galaxy, including the Milky Way, is wrapped in a huge envelope of gas called the circumgalactic medium, or CGM. This reservoir of raw material stretches 10–20 times the size of the visible portion of the galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-black-hole-jets-galaxies-visible.html Astronomy Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news709472146 In the first detailed chromosome map of the aardwolf, Texas A&M University researchers have discovered that, despite millions of years of separate evolution, the chromosomes of aardwolves, other hyenas and even domestic cats have remained remarkably similar. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-aardwolves-cats-chromosome-similarities.html Plants & Animals Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:40:02 EDT news709460281 Around 631,000 years ago—a geological blink of an eye—catastrophe unfolded in what is now northwestern Wyoming, U.S. During what is thought to have been a series of immense volcanic eruptions, life within hundreds of kilometers of the blasts was shattered. Ash was dispersed across much of North America, and the effects were felt worldwide. This was a super-eruption of the massive volcanic system located in what is now Yellowstone National Park. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-humanity-blowbyblow-account-yellowstone-supervolcano.html Earth Sciences Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:40:06 EDT news709205583 A new way to accurately measure the distance between quasar pairs—the blazing, black-hole-powered centers of distant galaxies that appear side by side in space—is showing promise through University of Alberta research. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-space-gap-precise-distance-quasar.html Astronomy Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:20:01 EDT news708943022 Dark matter is one of the oldest open problems in physics. It makes up most of the matter in the universe and shapes how galaxies form and move, yet no one has ever directly detected it. Physicists have proposed dozens of candidates to explain it: exotic new particles, black holes formed moments after the Big Bang and more. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-dark-natural-physicist.html General Physics Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:10:01 EDT news708856482 New research shows how artificial intelligence, combined with advanced experimental science, can help find "hidden" and unexplored proteins in the human body and reveal what they actually do, according to a new study published in Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-hidden-human-proteins-reveals.html Biotechnology Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:40:05 EDT news708351781 Surinam toads (Pipa pipa) are strange, flat frogs with minuscule eyes that live in the murky waters of the Amazon basin and carry their eggs on their backs. The way they catch prey is even weirder. They lie in wait with outstretched forelimbs until a small fish approaches, then snap open their jaws to create enough suction to draw the fish into their tongueless mouths and swallow it whole, all in a few hundredths of a second. But how do these frogs hunt in low visibility with poor vision? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-star-fingered-toads-fingertip-lobules.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:00:09 EDT news708091981 Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found a way to make plasma more effective for its wide-ranging uses, from antimicrobial applications to surface conditioning in the semiconductor industry. They mapped the production of atomic oxygen, a key ingredient of oxygen plasma, while a high voltage was applied across oxygen gas. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-dark-plasma-regions-reveal-overlooked.html Plasma Physics Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:40:01 EDT news707996281 NASA's newest crown jewel blasted off Sunday to hunt for planets around other stars, explore secret dark energy and survey the cosmos like never before. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-nasa-roman-space-telescope-quest.html Astronomy Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:26:54 EDT news707307976 The capital of any business comes in (at least) two categories. There's the kind that has a price—land, cash holdings, etc.—and a less tangible, priceless kind. Reputational capital falls squarely into the latter category. Try as they might, companies cannot buy positive public opinion, even with the largest marketing budgets. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-fake-customer-businesses-big.html Economics & Business Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:20:01 EDT news707034481 The Roman Space Telescope is designed to directly image exoplanets using complex optomechanical systems developed by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy https://phys.org/news/2026-08-roman-telescope-aims-image-exoplanets.html Astronomy Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:00:01 EDT news706962003 For close to a century, physicists have pursued a way to unite gravity with quantum mechanics. Known as quantum gravity, this goal has remained frustratingly out of reach so far. Similarly elusive is the force of dark energy, which is believed to be driving the universe's accelerating expansion. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dark-energy-quantum-gravity-deeply.html General Physics Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:40:06 EDT news706364525 A tiny UK-developed satellite, roughly the size of a small carry-on suitcase, could help answer one of the biggest questions in cosmology: What happened during the roughly 150 million years of the cosmic dark ages, before the universe's first stars appeared? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tiny-satellite-dark-side-moon.html Astronomy Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:00:01 EDT news705749643 Scientists often describe life as a series of chemical reactions. Pallav Kosuri, Ph.D., describes life as movement. Chemical reactions are how you drive the movement of atoms, proteins, cells and bodies—without movement, there is no life. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tiny-dna-rotor-microscopes-track.html Biotechnology Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:40:02 EDT news705921781 From nuclear energy to lab-grown meat, the list of effective but unpopular climate solutions is long. A new University of Colorado Boulder study sheds light on why people reject or accept some proposed sustainability technologies: If it doesn't seem natural, they won't go for it. And that holds across political ideologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-naturalness-emerges-key-driver-climate.html Environment Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:40:01 EDT news705670561 In Goethe's ballad "Erlkönig," immortalized in Schubert's fevered 1815 setting, a dying boy riding through the night sees a spectral king beckoning from the darkness. His father calms him: "Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif"—my son, it is only a wisp of fog. In the poem, the father's reassurance proves tragically wrong. In the quantum world, however, his words acquire an uncanny new meaning. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mirror-world-particles-wisps-fog.html General Physics Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:40:02 EDT news705324723 Using spectral data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), astronomers have gained some of the clearest evidence yet that white dwarf stars are accreting debris from disintegrating exoplanets. Captured while DESI was unable to study its primary targets: distant galaxies, the results provide unprecedented insights into the chemical makeup of rocky exoplanets, revealing compositions remarkably similar to the planets and asteroids of our own inner solar system. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-desi-side-reveals-spectra-disintegrated.html Astronomy Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:20:01 EDT news704452570 What if the Higgs boson found in 2012 is not alone but is the only sibling we have encountered so far? Scientists at CERN discovered the particle that year, and it was a major discovery because it explained how other particles acquire mass. For a long time, scientists thought this was the final piece of the puzzle. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-machine-narrows-additional-particles-higgs.html General Physics Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:50:01 EDT news704040661 Researchers in the U.S. have carried out the most stringent tests to date of the idea that an ultraviolet glow in the atmospheres of giant planets could partly arise through the indirect interaction between dark matter and ordinary matter. Led by Carlos Blanco at Penn State University and Rebecca Leane at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the team's results place some of the tightest constraints yet on the strength of this interaction. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-giant-planets-dark-detectors.html Astronomy Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:20:06 EDT news703496425 Honey bee larvae lack the sophisticated olfactory capabilities of adult honey bees, a new study finds. Scientists point to this temporary loss of function as a side effect of the nurse bees' heroic level of brood care, calling it a consequence of social evolution. The new findings are detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-honey-bees-larval-adult-life.html Plants & Animals Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:10:01 EDT news703255278 Researchers have uncovered a remarkable fossil site in a remote part of Canada's Northwest Territories, offering unprecedented insight into the earliest evolution of complex animal life on Earth. Findings from the site represent life from the Ediacaran biota—soft-bodied organisms that lived on the seafloor more than 500 million years ago—and push back the origins of animal movement and sexual reproduction by 5–10 million years. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-discovery-fossils-northwest-canada-view.html Evolution Wed, 20 May 2026 14:00:15 EDT news698486161 Some birds sing to attract a mate. Others dance or display colorful feathers. But in the moonlit forests and shrublands of northern Argentina, one bird courts romance by snapping its wrists together, producing a sharp clapping sound scientists have puzzled over for decades. Now, researchers have captured the behavior in detail for the first time, revealing how scissor-tailed nightjars create one of the most curious sounds in the avian world. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-birds-dark-flirt-nightjars-reveal.html Plants & Animals Tue, 19 May 2026 19:40:03 EDT news698426881