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 remarkable quality of bioengineering is that scientists can take biological processes honed by millions of years of evolution and use them to efficiently create drugs, chemicals and other products to improve our lives. Now Tufts researchers have found new ways to expand the potential for using bacterial spores as catalysts for chemical reactions, biofuel production or breaking down pollutants. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-bacterial-spores-reveal-protein-enzymes.html Cell & Microbiology Sun, 21 Jun 2026 17:00:03 EDT news700740116 Like humans, wildlife is increasingly vulnerable as climate change fuels longer and more intense heat waves, disrupting feeding and breeding and, in extreme cases, proving fatal. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-birds-fish-extreme-wildlife.html Environment Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:40:01 EDT news701084918 Companies working at the frontier of aerospace, energy and computing are constantly looking for new materials to improve performance. But in order to understand how those materials will actually behave once they're inside rockets or on computer chips, companies first have to make the material and then test it. That's because even the most powerful simulation techniques struggle to model the complex chemical arrangements in most of today's solid materials. The problem adds cost and time to materials innovation. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-technique-sharpens-metal-alloy-behavior.html Analytical Chemistry Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:00:01 EDT news701085478 New research suggests the microbiome near the surface of a plant's roots, known as the rhizosphere microbiome, may play a role in helping crops respond to heat stress. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-microbial-partners-maize-sorghum-higher.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:40:02 EDT news701088411 Scientists have demonstrated a noninvasive technique that uses light to reveal the hidden contents of chicken eggs, potentially helping to curb the meat industry's practice of killing billions of male chicks at birth. The study, published in Newton, found that when light enters an intact bird eggshell, it bounces back and forth many times, with photons traveling as far as 2 meters (6.6 feet) within a chicken egg's tiny, 4-centimeter (1.6-inch) interior. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-unhatched-eggs-chicken-gender-reveals.html Biotechnology Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:00:01 EDT news700990332 The Bullet Cluster has so far been considered evidence of the existence of dark matter. An international team of researchers has now analyzed new data and current images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). According to the team, the observations are also consistent with an alternative explanation that does not involve dark matter. If the latter is, in fact, present, it is likely to be in smaller quantities than postulated so far. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-bullet-cluster-reopen-dark-debate.html Astronomy Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:20:06 EDT news701083021 Excavations in Nijmegen-West have uncovered large sections of a Roman bathhouse. It is the largest bathhouse complex from the Roman period in the Netherlands. Radboud researcher Stephan Mols can often be found at the excavation site. "The new finds show that the Romans did not regard this city as a backwater. The buildings were even larger and more imposing than we had previously thought." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-unearthed-bathhouse-reveals-roman-nijmegen.html Archaeology Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:40:02 EDT news701079428 How does light turn into motion within a metal? A team of researchers from European XFEL, the University of Potsdam and other participating institutions has shown that ultrashort optical laser pulses can trigger extremely rapid lattice vibrations in periodically layered metal structures—not primarily by heating the atomic lattice, but through the pressure exerted by hot electrons. The results are published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-laser-pulses-layered-metals-vibrating.html Condensed Matter Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:10:03 EDT news701018641 Imagine returning to a favorite hiking trail 15 years after your first visit and discovering that many of the plants and animals that once lived there are gone. While these species may still exist elsewhere, these disappearances—known as local extinctions—are among the clearest signs that climate change is already transforming ecosystems and threatening species across the globe. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-climate-local-extinction-temperate-regions.html Plants & Animals Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:00:06 EDT news701013034 Mosses are survivors. They can dry into what looks like green dust, only to spring back to life minutes after rain. They can grow on rocks, in deserts, and there's talk of using them to terraform Mars someday. According to new research, mosses have also been hiding something. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hidden-fungus-moss-rewrite-million.html Evolution Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:40:03 EDT news701012881 Compostable plastics could be part of a solution to the world's plastic waste problem. But currently these materials need industrial composting facilities to break down. In a step toward making a home-compostable plastic, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have augmented polylactide (PLA)—a widely used biobased and compostable polymer—with a small amount of an additive. Tests show it helps the material degrade substantially faster without sacrificing critical qualities like strength or transparency. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-additive-faster-bioplastic-biodegradation-transparency.html Biochemistry Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:10:01 EDT news701016961 When heat waves hit the Western United States, the risk of wildfires quickly rises. The prolonged heat dries out vegetation, but that's only part of the cause—heat waves also play other roles in spreading wildfires. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-wildfire-small.html Environment Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:40:06 EDT news701010874 Billions of years ago, environmental conditions on Mars were significantly more hospitable than they are today. Our neighboring planet was likely warm, humid and surrounded by a dense atmosphere. Whether simple microorganisms could have evolved at that time remains an open question. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-mars-life-boost-rover-distinguishes.html Astrobiology Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:20:05 EDT news701007901 In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, a team from the Nägerl group, together with theory collaborator Alvise Bastianello from the CNRS and the Université Paris-Dauphine, demonstrates that highly unusual quantum states known as "fractional Fermi seas" can be quantum engineered. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-equilibrium-cesium-atoms-reveal-fractional.html Quantum Physics Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:20:01 EDT news700999737 Scientists can learn a lot about a quantum material by watching how it responds to light. In magnetic semiconductors, one especially useful messenger is the exciton: a pairing of a negatively charged electron and the positively charged "hole" it leaves behind. Until now, excitons in magnetic materials have mostly been used as reporters. They could reveal how spins were arranged or how magnetic waves moved through a material. But Cornell researchers have shown that excitons can do more than observe magnetism. They can actively steer it. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-magnet-excitons-knob-magnetic.html Condensed Matter Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:04 EDT news700995121 In the minds of many people, math lives in the classroom—on blackboards, in textbooks, and in tests. New research from Amber Simpson, associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership at Binghamton University's College of Community and Public Affairs, shows how math is happening all around us, especially at home, and that families don't even realize the role they play in how children experience mathematics. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-math-lesson-children-kitchen-table.html Education Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:20:02 EDT news700931562 A newly developed method allows researchers to dynamically switch chirality—a particular lack of mirror symmetry—to generate spin currents in semiconductors, researchers from Science Tokyo report. Their approach relies on the reversible insertion and removal of small chiral molecules from the interlayer gaps of a layered, nonchiral semiconductor material using electrochemistry. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-reversible-chirality-mos-generates-currents.html Condensed Matter Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:40:05 EDT news700909861 Once cotton gets wet, it pulls heat from your body. This is helpful when you're exercising or outside on a hot day, but dangerous in the bitter cold. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Energy Letters have created an ultralight synthetic fiber material with cotton-like fluffiness that also repels water. The prototype fabric outperformed regular cotton in both retaining heat in the cold and releasing heat at room temperature. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fabric-fluffy-cotton-doesnt.html Materials Science Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:20:01 EDT news700907941 An international team of scientists has identified a completely new type of rock from the red planet and, for the first time, discovered the mineral garnet in a Martian sample. The breakthrough offers a rare glimpse into Mars' ancient past and could help researchers piece together the planet's 4.5-billion-year geological history. The discovery was made by an international research team including James Darling, professor of Earth and planetary science, from the University of Portsmouth's School of the Environment and Life Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-mineral-garnet-mars-meteorite-reveal.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:00:04 EDT news700907281 Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have uncovered a mechanism that helps plants continue photosynthesizing under extreme heat and dry air conditions—a finding that could improve how scientists predict the effects of climate change on crops and ecosystems. The study is the first to successfully separate the effects of heat and air dryness on photosynthesis across different carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, which could have significant practical implications for agriculture by helping improve crop management strategies and strengthen food security. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-photosynthesis-hotter-drier-climates-biochemical.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 17 Jun 2026 08:40:08 EDT news700902481 New research led by a scientist at IPAC—a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech—studying the hot Jupiter CoRoT-2 b has settled on one of the three leading hypotheses explaining why its atmosphere has a hot spot in the opposite direction from that seen on all other exoplanets of this type. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-oddball-exoplanet-hot-jupiter.html Astronomy Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:20:09 EDT news700897261 When living cells grow, divide or respond to drugs, they give off tiny amounts of heat that offer information about what the cells are doing. But because these heat signals are so vanishingly small, they have traditionally been impossible to measure directly. Researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a calorimeter—a device that measures the heat transfer between a living system and its environment—that can detect metabolic heat signals on the order of 100 picowatts, or trillionths of a watt, in living cells. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sensor-cells-views-cell-metabolism.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:40:05 EDT news700830721 Experimental atomic physicists have discovered there is a maximum amount of electrical resistance, or resistivity, that can result from collisions between electrons. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-physicists-upper-limit-resistivity-pure.html General Physics Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:30:01 EDT news700842361 A research team from Tohoku University and Kyocera Corp. has developed a new magneto-optical material—a nanocomposite magnetic garnet film—that can be deposited directly onto silicon substrates while delivering a magneto-optical figure of merit four times higher than conventional polycrystalline films. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-silicon-compatible-nanocomposite-garnet-enables.html Nanophysics Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:00:01 EDT news700829521 An international research team led by Forschungszentrum Jülich and the IPK Leibniz Institute has developed an artificial intelligence model that predicts where regulatory proteins dock onto plant DNA to switch genes on and off. Trained entirely on the rich genomic data available for the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the model transfers successfully to crops such as maize—opening new ways to understand how genetic variation shapes crop performance. The study was recently published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ai-decodes-dna-gene.html Biotechnology Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:40:04 EDT news700828681 Communities around the world have adapted to live on the year-round frozen soil of frigid environments, such as in the Arctic. However, rising temperatures have introduced a new challenge: What happens when the ground under houses and roads begins to melt? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-digital-twin-alaska-permafrost-real.html Earth Sciences Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:01 EDT news700823428 Could Earth have seeded Jupiter's moon Europa with bacterial life, where it could have taken hold in Europa's ocean and perhaps evolved into something more? That's the hypothesis of a new paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology by Zaza Osmanov of the Free University of Tbilisi in Georgia. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-earth-life-jupiter-moon-europa.html Astrobiology Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:20:07 EDT news700742290 Astronomers have detected one of the most powerful ultra-fast outflows ever seen from a distant supermassive black hole. Using XMM-Newton and NuSTAR, a team studied a hyper-luminous quasar at cosmic noon and found two distinct wind components blasting away from the black hole, details of which are outlined in a paper submitted to the arXiv preprint server on June 3. The study has been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is currently under minor revision. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-powerful-ufo-blasting-distant-black.html Astronomy Tue, 16 Jun 2026 07:00:01 EDT news700486457 In the crystalline waters off Kenya's coast, coral reefs are thriving—evidence of a rare good-news story in the battle to protect oceans from the ravages of climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-global-reveals-coral-reefs-resist.html Ecology Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:09:35 EDT news700801709 A new study finds that plants respond to injury by actively redirecting sugars to damaged tissues, helping fuel the regeneration process. Using a fluorescent sensor to track sugar movement in living plants, researchers have discovered that wounds trigger a localized shift in energy transport, concentrating glucose around the injury site. The findings published in PNAS offer new insight into how plants coordinate repair and recovery and could help scientists better understand the mechanisms that support resilience in crops facing physical damage or environmental stress. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-energy-tissues.html Plants & Animals Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:40:01 EDT news700761481