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. Why has the yeast Candida auris become a dangerous pathogen worldwide in just a few years? This question is on the minds of many researchers. Carla Schuh and Chaitanya Gokhale from the Biocentre at the University of Würzburg have now summarized the current state of knowledge in a review article in the journal mSphere. To that end, they analyzed around 180 studies by other researchers. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-candida-auris-harbinger-dangerous-fungal.html Evolution Wed, 21 Oct 2026 19:00:01 EDT news711814201 Imagine encountering a rattlesnake in your backyard or while on a hike. It will most likely "freeze" to avoid attracting attention, but if it feels especially threatened, it may rattle and even strike, delivering a painful dose of venom. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-rattlesnakes-alike-personality-venom.html Plants & Animals Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:40:01 EDT news711793881 Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have reconstructed approximately 16,000 years of summer temperature changes from sediments collected at Lake Prokoško in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The findings show how the Western Balkans responded to rapid climate changes at the end of the last glacial period, how warmer and cooler phases unfolded during the Holocene, and how the impact of human land use became increasingly pronounced. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-reconstructing-years-summer-temperature-western.html Earth Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:30:02 EDT news711818342 A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a new instrument designed to eliminate blind spots between lines of lidar data on Earth's surface. Built with support from NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), the Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry Lidar System (CASALS) could help researchers map the features of Earth's surface in detail. Rather than mechanically steering a laser with moving mirrors, CASALS steers light using wavelength itself, generating a continuous, 3D swath of the ground below. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-casals-instrument-bridges-gaps.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:20:09 EDT news711795891 Researchers at Keele University have discovered that migratory butterflies may use different navigation systems to find their way during migrations, highlighting the importance of understanding how different species may respond to environmental changes. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-butterfly-reveal-migrating-species-natural.html Plants & Animals Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:20:01 EDT news711801421 Keeping to warm climates throughout their 250-million-year history may have helped crocodiles and their relatives survive the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-climates-crocodiles-outlast-dinosaurs.html Evolution Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:00:49 EDT news711792541 Despite being known for more mundane uses such as sticking notes to refrigerators or keeping bags shut, magnetization is one of the most fundamental and useful properties of a material. Indeed, it forms the physical basis for storing most of our digital information, encoding the bits used in hard drives, computer memories and credit cards. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ultrafast-ferromagnetism.html Condensed Matter Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:40:04 EDT news711801302 Natural gas leaks are a significant source of methane emissions in cities, but it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where and why they happen. And methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the main chemical component of natural gas, has been historically undercounted or omitted in emissions estimates, according to a team of atmospheric and climate science researchers in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-methane-emissions-baltimore-seasonal-daily.html Environment Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:20:17 EDT news711806175 Earthquakes and the seismic waves they generate provide some of the best clues to Earth's interior. To extend that success to other worlds, scientists placed seismometers on the Apollo missions to the moon and on the Viking Mars landers, which reached Mars in 1976. Though the Apollo detectors proved a resounding success, Viking's results on Mars were less clear: Viking 1's seismometer failed to deploy properly, and Viking 2 recorded only two ambiguous events. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-reexamined-viking-reveals-marsquake-region.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:40:06 EDT news711799802 Climate change can look very different at the scale of a forest, field or hillside. A new review shows how changes in vegetation and atmospheric conditions can cause local microclimates to warm at very different rates from the regional climate—and why this matters for understanding how biodiversity will respond to climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-life-earth-climate.html Earth Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:20:23 EDT news711798782 Scientists have proposed what they believe is the first method for detecting "mirror life"—a hypothetical form of life made from molecular building blocks that are the mirror image of those found naturally on Earth. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde and the Department of Chemistry at Durham University have outlined a new approach that could identify mirror organisms using molecules which emit left- and right-handed light. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-based-method-hypothetical-mirror-life.html Biotechnology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:00:14 EDT news711798483 Sitting in his narrow dugout canoe, Jean-Romeo Senguemboli frowned at the meager catch in his nets on the Central African Republic's Mbali River, where experts say deforestation is devastating the fish population. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fishing-terrible-deforestation-devastates-central.html Ecology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:40:06 EDT news711794221 Losing more ground in the fight against climate change, humanity is heading for a hotter world than experts projected last year—and the United States is a big reason for that, a new United Nations report says. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-world-ground-curb-climate-faulting.html Environment Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:20:25 EDT news711794023 For the first time, Northwestern University physicists have coaxed a single positron—the antimatter counterpart of an electron—into an exquisitely controlled quantum state. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-physicists-particle-antimatter-months.html General Physics Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:00:10 EDT news711713041 There are an estimated 10 quintillion insects alive on Earth at any given time. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 individual insects. But how many species are there, why do we need them, and what would happen if their numbers continued to fall? Dr. Alex Dittrich, a zoologist at Nottingham Trent University, explains why these small creatures play such a big role in keeping our planet functioning. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-insects.html Plants & Animals Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:00:01 EDT news711793877 Bacteria get a bad reputation—with all the outbreaks, infections and deaths. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-infections-bacteria-reveal-medicines-crops.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:40:13 EDT news711785956 A new study led by researchers at the Konkoly Observatory of the HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (HUN-REN CSFK) in Budapest has revealed what makes a distant red giant star the most explosively active in the entire Kepler field—and the answer lies in a surprisingly subtle interplay between a close stellar companion, vast dark starspots and a highly efficient internal magnetic dynamo. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-astronomers-uncover-powerful-stellar-flares.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:20:06 EDT news711791342 The oxygen in about every other breath we take comes from microscopic cells—phytoplankton—drifting in the surface of the ocean. Among them is Prochlorococcus, the smallest and most abundant photosynthetic organism in the seas. It single-handedly accounts for roughly 10% of all the carbon that the land and the oceans pull from the atmosphere each year. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ocean-abundant-loner-microbe-sticky.html Ecology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:00:06 EDT news711791161 All neutron stars have intense magnetic fields. The typical magnetic field of a neutron star is about 100,000 times stronger than the strongest magnetic fields we can create on Earth. But about 1% of neutron stars have even stronger magnetic fields. Known as magnetars, their magnetic fields can be 1,000 times stronger than a regular magnetic field. They are a likely cause of powerful transient events such as soft gamma-ray repeaters and fast radio bursts. A new study looks at how magnetars might form. The findings are published on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-magnetar-born-neutron-stars.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:40:08 EDT news711722299 The most comprehensive data set ever collected from Earth's atmosphere during a solar radiation event has highlighted the importance of better-coordinated radiation monitoring for aviation safety, according to new research led by the University of Surrey. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-rare-solar-storm-scientists-clearest.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:00:01 EDT news711720267 The site of a former U.S. military base in Greenland was ice-free at a time when summers were a few degrees warmer than today, according to a new University at Buffalo–led study of ancient sediment recovered from beneath the site in the 1960s. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-forgotten-samples-greenland-cold-war.html Earth Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:40:01 EDT news711727681 Housing development in Colorado is spreading into fire-prone landscapes, increasing wildfire risk and adding to the challenges of affordable housing and rising insurance costs. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-wildfire-resilient-homes-residents.html Environment Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:20:02 EDT news711718694 Green sawfish, distinguished by their long, sharklike bodies and tooth-lined "saw" on the front of their heads, are on the verge of extinction, largely due to overfishing and habitat loss. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-northern-australia-lifeboat-critically-endangered.html Plants & Animals Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:00:01 EDT news711718261 Millions of large feral animals roam Australia. Pigs, camels, deer, horses, water buffalo, cattle and goats were introduced deliberately as transport, livestock or to hunt. Many have since established wild populations. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-feral-threatened-endangered-camels-banteng.html Plants & Animals Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:50:04 EDT news711735961 A sequence on the Bayeux Tapestry shows King Harold alongside a crowd gazing at the sky, beneath the embroidered caption Isti mirant stella ("those people marvel at the star"). Above Harold sits Halley's Comet, with ghostlike invasion boats in the border below—a Norman framing of Harold as a doomed usurper whose betrayal invited destruction. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-terror-kings-halley-comet-medieval.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:30:01 EDT news711735061 Applying eyedrops is difficult in space, where there is almost no gravity. A KAIST research team has developed a wearable patch that delivers eyedrops to the eye without relying on gravity. The research team was led by Professor Ki-Hun Jeong from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, in collaboration with a research team led by Professor Se Joon Woo from Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. The paper is published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-eyedrops-space-wearable-patch-approach.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:00:04 EDT news711719304 Water isn't always as it seems. Under extreme conditions, such as those found on other planets, it has been discovered to change its atomic structure, giving it the means to alter its appearance and other properties. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-weve-physicists-earth-conditions.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:10:02 EDT news711729662 Global rainfall maps are built from observations collected by multiple satellites, but they have an important limitation. The satellites that provide these measurements cannot see the whole Earth at once. As a result, some regions of these maps can have no valid observations. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gaps-global-rainfall.html Earth Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:30:01 EDT news711727741 The Orionids—one of two major meteor showers caused by remnants from Halley's Comet—will peak this week, though a large moon will dim visibility until after it sets late at night. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-orionid-meteor-shower.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:30:01 EDT news711722869 Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars, the extremely dense cores left behind when massive stars explode. Astrophysicists have recently observed a pulsar rotating over 300 times per second that appeared to be slowing down unusually quickly. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-pulsar-apparent-slowdown-reveals-rare.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:20:10 EDT news711713533