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. Researchers at Oregon State University have potentially found a new way to treat the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma, whose two-year survival rate is less than 30%. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sugar-coated-nanoparticles-aggressive-brain.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:00:04 EDT news701512861 Researchers are constantly sifting through new spectral data gathered by powerful telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Most of the time, when they identify spectral features—specific absorption or emission lines from different types of light gathered from a planet, moon or star—these features are known to be caused by certain atoms or molecules. For example, the emission line at 426.7 nanometers is known to come from singly ionized carbon, representing a specific atomic transition between energy states of a carbon ion. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-titan-pluto-mysterious-spectral-feature.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:04 EDT news701346373 The Caspian Sea, the largest inland body of water on Earth, is shrinking. Not fluctuating, not entering another natural cycle, but shrinking. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-caspian-sea-lost-area-size.html Earth Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:20:07 EDT news701342377 Sloths are the slowest mammals on the planet, but living in dense jungles has made them notoriously difficult to study. For the first time, scientists have now sequenced and analyzed the two-toed sloth genome and revealed the genetics behind its extremely slow metabolism. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sloths-dna.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:03 EDT news700222262 Astronomers have identified a possible new example of one of the universe's strangest galaxy types: galaxies that appear to contain little or no dark matter. The newly studied pair, FCC 224 and FCC 240, on the outskirts of the Fornax Cluster, share several unusual traits with the only known pair of controversial dark-matter-deficient galaxies. The findings were uploaded to the arXiv preprint server on May 22. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-dark-deficient-twins-fornax-cluster.html Astronomy Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:20:03 EDT news700143095 Computational chemists at the University of Amsterdam's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences have developed a comprehensive software suite to create accurate models of DNA in biomolecular assemblies. Called MDNA, the user-friendly molecular modeling toolkit helps biochemists, molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, and biophysicists to visualize and analyze DNA structures and perform accurate simulations. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-source-software-rapid-dna-generation.html Biotechnology Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:00:03 EDT news699715022 Researchers at Eurac Research have obtained a detailed picture of the microbial community associated with Ötzi, Europe's oldest known natural human mummy. The study provides insights into a complex microbiome, ranging from the gut flora of a Copper Age human to cold-adapted yeasts. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-tzi-iceman-microbiome-year-relationship.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:00:02 EDT news699547952 Cities around the world are planting more trees to cope with rising urban heat. But our research shows trees alone are often not enough. In some cases, the wrong kind of greening can even make streets feel less comfortable on a hot day. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-trees-greenery-cool-cities-18c.html Earth Sciences Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:20:06 EDT news699527161 For years, scientists studying bowhead whales have relied on a simple idea: if a whale makes a long, square or U-shaped dive, it's feeding time. A new study demonstrates that assumption may not hold water. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-bowhead-whale.html Plants & Animals Thu, 28 May 2026 18:20:01 EDT news699196621 On the moon, the lack of atmosphere and accompanying features such as biological activity, oxygen-rich air, flowing water and rain, wind, and most erosion allows the lunar regolith to preserve a long-term record of surface processes in the space environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-regolith-reveal-nanoscale-space-weathering.html Astronomy Thu, 28 May 2026 10:20:07 EDT news699178261 When we think about highly sensitive medical testing, we often imagine a hospital laboratory filled with large instruments, trained technicians, and carefully controlled conditions. This is especially true for optical biosensing, where scientists try to detect extremely small changes caused by biomolecules binding to a sensor surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-based-sensor-ultrasensitive-disease-portable.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 21 May 2026 17:40:01 EDT news698499656 Azara's owl monkeys, a small primate species found in South America, are heavier today than those that lived a quarter-century ago, and evidence suggests that rising temperatures might have driven the weight gain, according to a Yale-led study of a wild population. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-climate-spurs-weight-gain-owl.html Plants & Animals Wed, 20 May 2026 14:03:45 EDT news698504595 A reexamination of microfossils found in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul shows that the marks previously interpreted as traces of worms or other small oceanic animals are actually communities of fossilized microscopic bacteria and algae. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-brazilian-microfossils-animal-algae-bacteria.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 11 May 2026 19:20:03 EDT news697736042 A research team from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) has led the paleohistological study of Ampelomeryx ginsburgi, a giraffomorph ruminant from the Middle Miocene recovered at the Els Casots site (Catalonia, Spain). Through microscopic analysis of bone tissues, the researchers were able to determine that this peculiar animal reached skeletal maturity at three years of age, while reproductive maturity began around the second year. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ampelomeryx-grew-life-history-giraffe.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:40:07 EDT news696681781 A study conducted in the Brazilian state of Amazonas has demonstrated that small amounts of Amazonian dark earth (ADE)—an anthropogenic soil created by ancient Amazonian populations—can increase the height and diameter of the pink trumpet tree (Handroanthus avellanedae) by up to 55% and 88%, respectively. This tree also occurs in the Atlantic Forest. The research is published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-soil-fertilization-amazonian-dark-earth.html Plants & Animals Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:40:06 EDT news696612241 Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have implemented an advanced microscopy technique to visualize multiple biomolecules inside the nucleus of a cancer cell simultaneously at incredibly high resolution. The biomolecules they visualized include critical components of the cell's transcription machinery and proteins that provide structural support to the nucleus—providing one of the first detailed maps of nuclear organization. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-high-resolution-imaging-nanoscale-nuclear.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:00:01 EDT news696256202 Roaring over long distances is a key behavior of lions. They communicate within prides as well as with other animals using distinct sequences of moans and grunts. Scientists from the GAIA Initiative have now published a machine learning approach in the journal Ecological Informatics that improves how roaring behavior can be studied. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-machine-roars-lion-collars-actual.html Ecology Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:20:02 EDT news696163502 For the first time, a stem cell model has produced a structure resembling an early human embryo with a yolk-sac-like structure, from a single starting stem cell population and without direct genetic manipulation. The models were made at University of Michigan Engineering. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences provided monkey embryo data to help confirm that the Michigan team was indeed seeing a yolk-sac-like structure in their models. The work is published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-stem-cell-embryo-yolk-sac.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:20:04 EDT news695919026 A joint theoretical study by the University of Innsbruck and Zhejiang University has uncovered the microscopic origin of a striking quantum phenomenon: a periodically driven gas of ultracold atoms that simply refuses to heat up, defying classical expectations. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-quantum-gas-resists-periodic-revealing.html Quantum Physics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:50:03 EDT news695918581 On a calm day, a light breeze might barely ripple the surface of a lake on Earth. But on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, a similar mild wind would kick up 10-foot-tall waves. This otherworldly behavior is one prediction from a new wave model developed by scientists at MIT. The model is the first to capture the full dynamics of waves and what it takes to whip them up under different planetary conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-titan-lakes-spawn-foot-gentle.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:00:06 EDT news695550271 Alena Tensor is a relatively new mathematical approach that allows for arbitrary curving and straightening of analyzed spacetimes. As it turns out, generalizing this model to all known fields and fully describing matter, spontaneously gives rise to the phenomena known from research on dark matter and dark energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-dark-alena-tensor-math-framework.html Astronomy Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:00:03 EDT news695384357 For the last 80 years, the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), which describes all electromagnetic interactions, has been a cornerstone of the standard model, withstanding the scrutiny of countless experiments and agreeing with observations down to the smallest known precisions. Yet, some high-intensity scales of QED remain unexplored, prompting some to wonder if quantum computers could deal with these scales' inherent complexity. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-quantum-simulations-tackle-photon-polarization.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:20:09 EDT news695384043 How can magma buried 5, 10, or even 15 km underground be detected without any surface indicators? The answer lies in ambient noise tomography, a technique that analyzes natural ground vibrations with high precision. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (CNR-IGG), and the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) has identified a vast reservoir containing approximately 6,000 km3 of magma beneath Tuscany. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-super-magma-reservoirs-beneath-tuscany.html Earth Sciences Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:40:03 EDT news695377589 Most polychaete species spend their lives in burrows in the seabed. However, adult individuals of two species, Alitta succinea and Platynereis dumerilii, leave their burrows to spawn during warm summer nights around the full moon. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-unexpected-predator-jellyfish-shown-polychaete.html Plants & Animals Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:40:03 EDT news695041467 The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie's Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in Nature Communications, predicts that a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride exists under the extreme pressures and temperatures found deep inside these outer solar system bodies. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-depths-neptune-uranus-superionic.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:00:01 EDT news694435981 A new study published in Nature Astronomy indicates that the dense, star- and dark-matter–rich environments around supermassive black hole binaries pack on the order of a million solar masses into each cubic parsec. The team used gravitational-wave data from pulsar timing arrays to probe galactic centers that are otherwise impossible to observe directly. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-gravitational-reveal-hidden-galactic-centers.html Astronomy Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:40:01 EST news692010701 Estimating things that exist is generally easy, but when it comes to estimating things that do not exist, it's more difficult. This is something physicists from Poland and the UK are well aware of. To improve current simulations of high-energy particle collisions, they have developed a more accurate method for estimating the impact of calculations that are not performed. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-large-hadron-collider.html General Physics Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:30:06 EST news691950482 For the first time in Brazil, researchers have identified a field of tektites. These are natural glasses formed by the high-energy impact of extraterrestrial bodies against Earth's surface. These structures, named geraisites in honor of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where they were first discovered, constitute a new strewn field. This expands the incomplete record of impacts in South America. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-impact-glass-evidence-cosmic-collision.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:51:22 EST news690817861 Monarch butterflies have always been remarkably resilient. Every fall, these delicate orange-and-black travelers set out on a journey so improbable it borders on myth, flying some three thousand kilometers from Canadian fields all the way to Mexico's mountain forests, their overwintering grounds. They've been weathering habitat loss, extreme weather and pesticides, but new research from the University of Ottawa suggests a new snag in their epic trek. The culprit? Nectar. Turns out, their main food source isn't what it used to be. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-climate-nectar-quality-threatening-monarch.html Plants & Animals Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:52:30 EST news688395121 Researchers have taken a leap in understanding how kangaroos can increase their hopping speeds without incurring an associated energetic cost. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-kangaroos-posture-energy-high.html Plants & Animals Fri, 19 Dec 2025 08:29:21 EST news685355342