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. In our solar system's corner of the galaxy, stars rarely collide. It makes sense: Space is vast, and stars have room to roam. Even in most of the present-day universe, stellar collisions are rare. The James Webb Space Telescope, however, peers deep enough into space to see the universe as it was not too long after the Big Bang. Its observations have revealed extraordinarily compact stellar systems, raising the possibility that collisions between stars were once much more common. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-stellar-collisions-common-universe-young.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:00:32 EDT news712225924 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 If you wanted a Nobel Prize, you would do well to study neutrinos. To date, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded five times to research related to neutrino detection and discovery. This year, Francis Halzen earned the Nobel "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin." https://phys.org/news/2026-10-neutrino-science-year-nobel-prize.html General Physics Thu, 22 Oct 2026 19:30:01 EDT news711891573 An international team of researchers, including members from the University of Michigan, has revealed surprising results that could rewrite our understanding of a key transition in the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-hubble-supernova-role-cosmic-reionization.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:20:15 EDT news711800461 Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have completed two of the largest cosmological simulations ever performed. Each simulation modeled the evolution of 13.4 trillion dark matter particles across a region 28.6 billion light-years wide. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-aurora-supercomputer-powers-largest-cosmological.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:00:14 EDT news711713693 How do young stars reshape the clouds from which they are born? A new high-resolution 3D model developed by an international team led by Dr Brandt Gaches from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows how the uneven structure of stellar nurseries creates shadows that alter their chemistry and influence the infrared emission observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The model has now been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-3d-reveals-shadows-reshape-chemistry.html Astronomy Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:40:04 EDT news711374216 Seven billion light-years from Earth, there is an unexpected cluster of galaxies. It has two regions in the process of colliding with each other with a combined mass of more than two quadrillion solar masses. Given its mass, the distant cluster has been nicknamed El Gordo, the Fat One. What makes it unusual is that it's extraordinarily large for that period of the universe. How did such a large supercluster form so early? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-distant-supercluster-galaxies-interacting-dark.html Astronomy Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:00:08 EDT news711367633 This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove. Hubble captured the image as part of a survey looking at 260 satellite galaxies around 22 Milky Way–like host galaxies within a radius of about 32 million light-years from Earth. Hubble has already observed 111 of these satellite galaxies. The remaining galaxies will take an additional 149 Hubble orbits, one orbit for each galaxy, to observe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-hubble-spies-spiral-edge.html Astronomy Fri, 16 Oct 2026 13:40:08 EDT news711366863 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 In the early moments of the big bang, two elements were forged: hydrogen and helium. Technically, the tiniest traces of light elements such as lithium were produced as well, but nothing of consequence. The early universe was about three parts hydrogen to one part helium. All the heavier elements, from the oxygen in your lungs to the iron in your blood, were created through astrophysical processes—fused in stars, formed in supernovae or scattered by the collisions of neutron stars. Even in the present cosmos, heavier elements are so cosmically rare that astronomers group them all as metals. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-primordial-helium-big.html Astronomy Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:20:07 EDT news711026702 For many years, the simplest view of dark energy has been that it remains unchanged. Throughout cosmic history, the mysterious ingredient believed to drive the universe's accelerated expansion is thought to have behaved in the same way at every epoch. However, an increasing number of observations are challenging this idea. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-alternative-gravity-theory-explanation-dark.html Astronomy Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:40:14 EDT news711029618 Using data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, with help from artificial intelligence, an international team of scientists has discovered 70 new gravitational lenses—rare cosmic alignments that act as natural magnifying glasses. The new lenses further expand one of the largest collections of confirmed lenses to date and will allow scientists to study dark matter, galaxy evolution and the structure of the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-largest-2d-universe-scientists-gravitational.html Astronomy Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:40:12 EDT news710669701 An undergraduate astrophysics student at UC Berkeley has found three unusual galaxies—cataloged as Shapiro Dwarf Galaxies I, II and III. Each galaxy is far from other galaxies and has stopped making stars, a combination that is extremely rare. The discovery, published in The Astrophysical Journal, provides compelling observational evidence of a long-held astronomical theory. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-undergraduate-student-puzzle-isolated-galaxies.html Astronomy Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:20:11 EDT news710603101 The universe may be trapped in its own comfort zone, and a researcher in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has helped explain why it cannot seem to leave. A new study suggests the universe could be locked into its current state by the same kinds of quantum effects that scientists study when trying to preserve fragile information inside a quantum computer. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-quantum-interactions-early-universe-fields.html Astronomy Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:20:09 EDT news710425308 Primordial black holes (PBHs) don't exist as far as we know. But if they did, these hypothetical objects would have formed in the early universe rather than from dying stars, and they may even make up dark matter. That's not the end of the weirdness. Their formation could have been even stranger if it occurred in a universe with a dark dimension, which is another theoretical construct. It posits that our space includes a hidden extra spatial dimension. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-tiny-ancient-black-holes-dimensional.html Astronomy Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:40:16 EDT news710412892 Dark matter could be a type of matter in the universe that does not emit, absorb or reflect detectable light and appears to interact very weakly with regular matter. Although physicists have observed gravitational effects attributed to dark matter, they have not yet been able to determine what it is made of. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-gamma-ray-limits-dark-annihilation.html Astronomy Sun, 04 Oct 2026 15:20:01 EDT news709978528 In the early days of the universe, our home looked very different from how it does today. Back then, the region in our universe that would eventually become our Milky Way neighborhood was a collection of thousands of smaller galaxies—some pumping out tons of new stars, others filled only with gas or littered with dead stars and black holes. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-milky-begun-thousands-galaxies-simulations.html Astronomy Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:00:07 EDT news710002132 Astronomers analyzed 2,435 galaxies hosting actively feeding black holes using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Among them, they identified 546 "bulgeless" galaxies—systems with little or no central stellar bulge. Their paper, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that galaxies without a central bulge grow black holes just as effectively as galaxies that have one—a surprising sign that black holes don't need galaxy mergers to grow normally. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-black-holes-quietly-galaxies-violent.html Astronomy Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:20:02 EDT news710150297 An instrument built to study cosmic rays has turned out to be a powerful tool for investigating thunderstorms. Earlier observations with the GRAPES-3 muon telescope revealed that thunderclouds can develop electrical potential differences far greater than those ever measured directly. But they also uncovered a puzzle: the instrument detected many more thunderstorm events in the eastern part of its field of view than in the western part. A new study by the same team, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, has now explained why. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-cosmic-ray-particles-probe-powerful.html Earth Sciences Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:02 EDT news710067792 Researchers have used some of the most detailed simulations yet of the early universe to investigate how the first stars and galaxies formed. Led by researchers at the University of Bath in the U.K., alongside collaborators at the University of Chicago in the U.S. and the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris in France, the MEGATRON project uses advanced simulations to explore how the first stars and galaxies lit up the previously dark cosmos and enriched it with the chemical elements that would later become the building blocks of everything around us. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-simulations-stars-cosmic-fingerprints-visible.html Astronomy Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:00:06 EDT news709899721 The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) has shown for the first time that it can detect the faint glow of hydrogen gas from deep in the universe's past using only its own data. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hydrogen-distant-dark-energy.html Astronomy Mon, 28 Sep 2026 19:00:04 EDT news709825988 Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing—pinging your friends and associates—that we all brought them back into our lives, or adopted them for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-overlooked-era-cosmology-quest-cosmos.html Astronomy Fri, 25 Sep 2026 15:20:01 EDT news709554001 A simplified cosmological model suggests that decoherence can suppress quantum tunneling, effectively locking fields into the vacuum state they have reached. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-cosmic-lockdown-environment-isolate-quantum.html General Physics Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:01 EDT news709483741 If you want to understand the origins of black holes, Yale astronomers say, you need to look beyond the centers of galaxies and start searching in the nooks and crannies. That's where you'll find the "wanderers"—black holes whose journeys may tell the story of how the first black holes formed. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-roaming-black-holes-hidden-history.html Astronomy Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:00:06 EDT news709380541 Unlike electric charge, as far as we know all mass is positive, and positive masses attract one another. Could negative mass exist, and if so, what would be the ramifications? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-negative-mass.html General Physics Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:20:12 EDT news709372229 When the James Webb Space Telescope pointed its powerful instruments toward the early universe, scientists were surprised by what it found. At high-redshift (z) values, corresponding to less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers witnessed an abundance of galaxies that hosted what appeared to be the "seeds" of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). https://phys.org/news/2026-09-environment-supermassive-black-holes.html Astronomy Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:40:01 EDT news709192681 If some aspects of cosmic topology turn out to be true, the idea that starships might voyage across the cosmos for hundreds of thousands of light-years without ever returning to the same neck of spacetime could be problematic. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-astronomy-decades-quest-cosmic-topology.html Astronomy Fri, 18 Sep 2026 08:20:02 EDT news708930422 Of all the discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope, the multitude of Little Red Dots it has observed is among the most enigmatic. Now, simulations using the Japanese Supercomputer ATERUI III have explained the nature of the Little Red Dots without requiring any exotic assumptions. The simulations show that the Little Red Dots are black holes growing at a rate that would be impossible today because of conditions in the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-japanese-supercomputer-simulations-webb-red.html Astronomy Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:00:03 EDT news708856352 Dwarf galaxies—with a mass equal to about a billion suns, but often considerably less—are the most abundant in the universe. However, because of their low luminosity, they are very difficult to detect. They have mostly been discovered in the vicinity of the Milky Way, in what is called the Local Group, but also, and in large quantities, at greater distances, where current instrumentation cannot distinguish individual stars. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ghost-galaxies-emerge-hosts-dwarf.html Astronomy Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:40:06 EDT news708766202 An international team, including researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has reached a major milestone in "precision cosmology" by measuring the amount of helium created in the universe's first five minutes with unprecedented accuracy. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-key-early-universe-precision.html Astronomy Sun, 13 Sep 2026 08:00:01 EDT news708186473