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. Research led by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, along with Professor Subir Sarkar from the University of Oxford, questions the widely accepted argument that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating and that this is driven by "dark energy" arising from the quantum vacuum. Their letter has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pantheon-analysis-supernovae-universe.html Astronomy Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:50:03 EDT news701367841 There are multiple ways to form black holes. The one most commonly taught in high school physics classes is that they are created from the collapse of a dying star. But there is another class of black holes, known as primordial black holes (PBHs), that could have been created immediately after the Big Bang by matter collapsing in on itself. Or that's the theory, at least. Though long theorized, we've never actually seen one of them, though scientists have suggested that they might account for the missing mass of the universe, which we otherwise describe as "dark matter." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-asteroid-mass-black-holes-cosmic.html Astronomy Mon, 22 Jun 2026 16:40:07 EDT news701353200 Just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe was a dark and simple place. There were no galaxies like the Milky Way, no planets, and no heavy elements such as carbon or oxygen. Instead, vast clouds of primordial hydrogen and helium drifted through space, slowly falling into invisible cocoons of dark matter known as "minihalos." Within these halos, the very first stars—called Population III stars—were born. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-primordial-halo-simulations-reveal-cosmic.html Astronomy Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:20:06 EDT news701347681 A stunningly concentrated and hefty galaxy cluster, from a time in the universe's history when such massive structures aren't expected to have fully formed yet, is challenging cosmic evolution theories. Across a series of three recent papers, a team led by researchers from IPAC—a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech—have revealed that the cluster is the most distant example of strong gravitational lensing with a galaxy cluster. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jwst-images-abnormally-galaxy-cluster.html Astronomy Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:20:01 EDT news701089598 Dr. Shing-Chi Leung, assistant professor of physics at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has published the article "Primordial Black Hole Triggered Type Ia Supernovae II: Comparison with Supernova Remnants and Galactic Chemical Evolution" in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper was co-authored by SUNY Poly student Seth Walther, a senior majoring in electrical and computer engineering and applied mathematics with a minor in physics; Alexander Kusenko (UCLA); Ken'ichi Nomoto (Kavli IPMU, recipient of the 2026 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2026 Gruber Cosmology Prize); and Tomoharu Suzuki (Chubu University). https://phys.org/news/2026-06-supernova-explored-primordial-black-holes.html Astronomy Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:20:06 EDT news700916762 Between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, two physicists, Michael Hart and Frank Tipler, published a controversial series of papers arguing that extraterrestrial intelligence didn't exist. As they argued, the likelihood that extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) would have had enough time to develop advanced computing, spaceflight and self-replicating machines (Von Neumann probes) means they would have colonized the galaxy, and come to Earth, long ago. Since there was no evidence of this, they reasoned that ETCs must not exist and humanity was alone in the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-david-kipping-advanced-life-universe.html Astrobiology Sat, 13 Jun 2026 19:30:02 EDT news700402136 A University of Birmingham scientist has built a "mini-universe" that takes a step toward answering one of science's biggest questions: "What is time?" Publishing his findings in Physical Review Research, Professor Giovanni Barontini shows how it is possible to measure the flow of time without using a clock at all. The new findings provide a scientific model in which a version of time emerges from the experiment itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientist-miniuniverse-clock.html General Physics Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:20:01 EDT news700487646 The European Space Agency (ESA) has officially adopted ARRAKIHS as a scientific mission, confirming the target launch date of 2030. Matthieu Schaller is part of the science team: "I look forward to learning more about the dark part of our cosmos." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-esa-arrakihs-mission-eu-exploration.html Astronomy Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:40:08 EDT news700403141 After only four short years, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and observational cosmologists like Richard Ellis at University College London (UCL) have pushed the cosmic lookback time to an era when the universe's very first stars and galaxies are within observational reach. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cosmic-dawn-universe-stars.html Astronomy Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:00:01 EDT news700380542 Our universe's expansion is still accelerating despite recent claims suggesting otherwise, an international team of astrophysicists says. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cosmic-analysis-rebuts-slowdown.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:00:02 EDT news700313642 The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot's spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-black-hole-stars-webb-strongest.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:40:03 EDT news700313821 A study in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics explores how a machine-learning strategy known as transfer learning could dramatically reduce the computational cost of searching for new physics beyond the standard cosmological model—while also revealing an unexpected risk: Sometimes AI systems can become too reliant on what they already know. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-physics-ai-unlearn.html General Physics Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:01 EDT news700213321 From the air, you see it only through the constant jolt, tilt, and shudder of the low-flying Cessna aircraft. The landscape of the Llanos de Moxos, northern Bolivia, appears as a disconnected patchwork of open grassland savannahs, forest islands, and lakes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-great-mysteries-archaeology-ancient-amazonian.html Social Sciences Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:00:04 EDT news700144861 NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon through the Artemis program and ultimately send humans to Mars highlight just how far space exploration has come. Yet while the moon and Mars remain compelling destinations filled with scientific mysteries, looking beyond our solar system raises even deeper questions about the universe itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-upcoming-telescopes-dark.html Astronomy Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:40:04 EDT news700144742 A new theoretical study may have cracked one of the most puzzling discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Little Red Dots, spotted across the early universe. The paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server on May 29, argues that these objects could be black holes caught in rare, violent bursts of feeding at a rate exceeding theoretical limits. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-black-hole-jwst-red-dots.html Astronomy Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:20:03 EDT news700134702 A supermassive black hole lies at the heart of every galaxy, including the Milky Way. When a black hole is active, it pulls material in as a whirlpool of high-temperature gas and dust. As this cosmic material piles up and falls onto a black hole, it lights up its vicinity, radiating a huge amount of energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-astronomers-earliest-flickering-quasar.html Astronomy Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:04:52 EDT news700135106 Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime. Their first direct detection in 2015 marked a revolutionary moment in astronomy. Today, we have a thorough understanding of signals that travel far from their sources through quiet, nearly empty space, such as those emitted when black holes merge. In this case, the wave can be considered a minor disturbance on a silent background. The distinction between "background" and "wave" is clear, and the quantity measured by the detector—a tiny stretching and squeezing—is clearly determined. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gravitational-universe-free-approach.html General Physics Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:40:03 EDT news699806881 The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and "weighed" by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL. The study, published in Science, identified a dormant black hole at the heart of a galaxy known as MRG-M0138 located over 10 billion light years away. It is the most distant dormant black hole yet detected, 15 times farther away than the previous record. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jwst-dormant-black-hole-billion.html Astronomy Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:00:11 EDT news699784502 Galactic collisions are events of breathtaking proportions. The supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their centers plunge into a chaotic orbital dance that eventually coalesce into a single remnant. On their way to that point, they could eventually get "kicked" out of the center of their galaxy—and finding these "recoiling" black holes has been a challenge of cosmology for decades. A new paper, made available on the arXiv preprint server by an international team, used a novel idea to track down these fast-moving behemoths. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-astronomers-uncover-statistical-evidence-recoiling.html Astronomy Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:40:01 EDT news699693842 Black holes, regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, have been widely studied over the past decades, due to their unique and intriguing properties. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that black holes obey a set of rules, known as the laws of black hole mechanics. These rules somewhat resemble the laws of thermodynamics, which delineate how energy, heat, and entropy behave in our universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-violating-3rd-law-black-hole.html General Physics Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:00:04 EDT news699524996 It's tricky to make an exact copy of yourself. Or at least it is for cells undergoing mitosis, where cells replicate everything inside of them, including their neatly packaged DNA, then split in half. Rice University professor Peter Wolynes is interested in how the packaged DNA, called a chromosome, changes its structure during replication, going from a ball shape to a cylinder shape that can be transported easily to the daughter cell. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-chromosome-links-steady-motor-shift.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 29 May 2026 12:00:03 EDT news699268719 Think about a census. You could photograph every house in the country and produce a beautiful map, but without knocking on doors and asking questions, you'd know almost nothing about the people living in them. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-eyes-universe.html Astronomy Fri, 29 May 2026 11:00:01 EDT news699267722 Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-dark-energy-equation-mathematicians-standard.html Astronomy Thu, 28 May 2026 13:20:06 EDT news699190321 Quantum computers have the potential to transform science, accelerating breakthroughs in drug development, cosmology, materials science, nuclear physics, and more. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-qa-gen-quantum.html Quantum Physics Wed, 27 May 2026 15:20:03 EDT news699113823 Researchers from the University of Glasgow's Institute for Gravitational Research are celebrating the publication of a vast new treasure trove of gravitational wave detections, hailed as a milestone marking the coming of age of gravitational astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-ligovirgokagra-precision-gravitational-astronomy.html Astronomy Tue, 26 May 2026 13:20:11 EDT news699015182 Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, have identified a promising new method for measuring the mass of galaxies orbiting the Milky Way by using pulsars, some of the universe's most precise natural clocks, to detect tiny gravitational effects across our galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-pulsars-ultra-precise-gravitational-probes.html Astronomy Fri, 22 May 2026 12:40:04 EDT news698666582 Dark matter is an elusive form of matter that almost never emits, absorbs or reflects light, while only weakly interacting with regular matter. These properties make it very difficult to detect using conventional experimental techniques and instruments. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-intrinsic-quantum-effects-axion-dark.html General Physics Fri, 22 May 2026 08:10:02 EDT news698581195 One of the most puzzling findings from the JWST's observations of the early universe is the size of black holes. According to our understanding of black hole growth, these early black holes are far more massive than expected. Astronomers expected the unexpected from JWST, and it has delivered. Now the challenge is to update models of the universe to include these new observations. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-explanation-massive-black-holes-jwst.html Astronomy Wed, 20 May 2026 09:20:11 EDT news698486701 Cosmologists have long struggled to determine whether the universe's accelerating expansion is being driven by a simple cosmological constant, or whether dark energy's influence is evolving over time. In a new analysis published in Physical Review D, Samsuzzaman Afroz and Suvodip Mukherjee at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, have identified a subtle impact on the inference of the nature of dark energy, due to a tiny mismatch between a fundamental cosmological distance relation and two key datasets used to measure the properties of dark energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-evolving-dark-energy.html Astronomy Tue, 19 May 2026 07:30:01 EDT news698316441 We may be more in the dark about dark matter than previously thought, according to a new analysis of distant galaxy clusters. Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, a leading theorist on the nature of black holes and dark matter, says new observational data conflicts with certain assumptions about cold dark matter (CDM)—unseen, slow-moving particles that are inferred by their effect on gravity—and may prompt a fundamental rethinking of dark matter by scientists. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-qa-dark.html Astronomy Thu, 14 May 2026 16:55:12 EDT news697996441