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 his 1964 paper, "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations," famed astrophysicist and radio astronomer Nikolai Kardashev addressed the types of transmissions (and at what energies) astronomers should search for in their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). As part of his analysis, Kardashev proposed a universal scale for classifying the technological advancement of civilizations based on their overall energy consumption. The resulting Kardashev Scale (as it came to be known) came down to three categories. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-kardashev-conundrum-bitcoin-metric.html Astrobiology Thu, 21 May 2026 12:20:02 EDT news698582862 It's a truism among oceanographers that there is more accurate mapping of the surface of the moon and Mars than of the deep-ocean floor. That's especially true for the Bismarck Sea, a relatively deep body of water north of Papua New Guinea. It's an ocean basin with a geologically complex seafloor rife with faults, volcanic features, rifts, scarps, and active subduction and spreading zones at depths that make high-resolution sonar mapping challenging. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-eruption-bismarck-sea.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:01 EDT news698568002 Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the lofty goal of ferrying humans to Mars and colonizing Earth's neighboring planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spacex-sprawling-company-stars-mars.html Space Exploration Thu, 21 May 2026 07:10:01 EDT news698556075 Elon Musk announced plans Wednesday for one of the biggest stock sales ever by taking public a space company that is currently losing billions of dollars a year. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spacex-reveals-biggest.html Space Exploration Thu, 21 May 2026 04:50:01 EDT news698556038 Elon Musk's SpaceX is set for the debut launch of its latest Starship iteration on Thursday, testing the most powerful version yet of the megarocket as the company targets a blockbuster initial public offering. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spacex-starship-ipo.html Space Exploration Thu, 21 May 2026 04:19:02 EDT news698555875 Neptune's far-flung moon Nereid may be the last of the planet's original companions that managed to survive a cosmic crash, scientists reported Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-neptune-mysterious-moon-nereid-survivor.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 20 May 2026 15:55:54 EDT news698511286 The Haystack 37m Telescope has been a landmark in radio astronomy and radar studies of the solar system since its first light in 1964. Over the following four decades, it supported NASA's Apollo landings on the moon, made planetary radar maps of the surface of Venus, contributed to experimental tests of Einstein's general relativity, supported the development of VLBI, and conducted foundational studies of quasars and star-forming regions. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-years-legendary-telescope-black-holes.html Astronomy Wed, 20 May 2026 10:00:01 EDT news698489714 SpaceX seems to have mistaken shooting for the moon with shooting at the moon. Forecast to occur on Aug. 5, a five-story-long piece of a rocket from one of the private space exploration company's recent lunar missions is expected to hit the moon at around 5,400 miles per hour, around 24 times the speed of a Formula 1 racecar. As it currently stands, projections put the rocket's crash course with the moon at 2:44 a.m. Eastern Time. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spacex-rocket-moon-space-private.html Space Exploration Wed, 20 May 2026 08:40:01 EDT news698479668 Some birds sing to attract a mate. Others dance or display colorful feathers. But in the moonlit forests and shrublands of northern Argentina, one bird courts romance by snapping its wrists together, producing a sharp clapping sound scientists have puzzled over for decades. Now, researchers have captured the behavior in detail for the first time, revealing how scissor-tailed nightjars create one of the most curious sounds in the avian world. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-birds-dark-flirt-nightjars-reveal.html Plants & Animals Tue, 19 May 2026 19:40:03 EDT news698426881 A review paper led by researchers from the University of St Andrews highlights the transformative potential in the use of radar in polar research to predict future sea levels. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-radar-polarimetry-machine-glacial-ice.html Earth Sciences Tue, 19 May 2026 17:20:07 EDT news698421782 A new European-led telescope could map the dusty, hidden half of the universe, all without using fossil fuels. If you have ever seen the Milky Way in the night sky, you probably noticed that it looks cloudy. That is because towards the center of our galaxy, and of most galaxies, there are vast amounts of dust that make it hard to see what is going on. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-atlast-telescope-reveal-universe.html Astronomy Tue, 19 May 2026 13:40:03 EDT news698411764 As space missions travel farther from Earth, spacecraft must increasingly be able to process and store their own data. Soon, artificial intelligence (AI) could be the primary tool for handling this growing volume of information. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nand-storage-deep-space-missions.html Space Exploration Tue, 19 May 2026 12:20:01 EDT news698408281 In December 2023, scientists looking at Mars data stumbled across something completely unexpected—observations of an atmospheric effect never before seen in the Red Planet's atmosphere. Using instruments aboard NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission, scientists identified a phenomenon known to occur in Earth's magnetosphere, where charged particles are squeezed like toothpaste coming out of a tube along magnetic structures called flux tubes. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mars-reveals-zwan-wolf-effect.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 18 May 2026 18:20:01 EDT news698339461 Looking back at 14 years of Hubble telescope data for Jupiter's moon Europa has given Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists a better understanding of its tenuous atmosphere. The findings have cast doubt on previous evidence suggesting that the icy moon intermittently discharges faint water plumes from a presumed subsurface ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-reconsider-europa-vapor-plumes.html Astrobiology Mon, 18 May 2026 17:00:05 EDT news698337061 Earth has a group of cosmic stalkers. Known as "co-orbitals," these small bits of rock have a 1:1 mean motion resonance with Earth. Basically, they take the exact same amount of time to orbit the sun as we do. Astronomers have long believed these objects wandered in from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but recent spectral analysis suggests they better match the space-weathered lunar silicates that make up the moon's surface. As such, there has been an ongoing debate about whether these cosmic stalkers are actually visitors from the belt or blasted pieces of the moon. A new study, published in Icarus, from researchers Elisa Alessi and Robert Jedicke provides strong hints that the belt is the more likely source—but pretty soon we'll get a definitive answer from a spacecraft. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-earth-constant-companion-stray-asteroid.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 18 May 2026 16:40:01 EDT news698331253 They rank among the darkest and coldest places in the solar system: Hundreds of lunar craters, many of them at the moon's south pole, never receive direct sunlight and lie in permanent shadow. That's exactly why physicist Jun Ye and his colleagues suggest that these craters are the perfect place to build a critical component for an ultrastable laser. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-dark-lunar-craters-host-ultrastable.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 18 May 2026 14:09:37 EDT news698332087 On Thursday, NASA issued a Request for Proposal (RFP), seeking industry collaboration for the Mars Telecommunications Network. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nasa-industry-mars-telecommunications-network.html Space Exploration Fri, 15 May 2026 08:37:42 EDT news698053022 Researchers have developed a mathematical method that enables more precise calculations of the most economical travel routes between the orbits of celestial bodies. To demonstrate this method, they calculated a more efficient path between Earth's and the moon's orbits than any previously described in the scientific literature. The study is published in the journal Astrodynamics. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mathematical-method-efficient-earth-moon.html Space Exploration Fri, 15 May 2026 05:30:01 EDT news698037277 Spain, one of the few places in the world where a total solar eclipse will be visible in August, has begun preparations for an event it hopes will shift tourism away from the beaches and toward the countryside. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spain-gears-august-total-solar.html Space Exploration Thu, 14 May 2026 19:00:02 EDT news697983210 There's a new space race to the moon, and this time the ambitions are not just to visit but to stay. NASA's Artemis program aims to establish a long-term human presence on the lunar surface in the 2030s. China, India, Japan and a number of private companies all have lunar mission programs of their own. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-future-missions-moon-sustainable.html Space Exploration Thu, 14 May 2026 12:27:49 EDT news697980421 Just a few hours before the Orion spacecraft crossed the sky en route to the moon on April 1, mechatronics engineer Rodrigo Trevisan Okamoto received confirmation he had been waiting for since the Artemis 2 mission was announced in 2023. The email from NASA stated that the crew of the first crewed mission to orbit the moon in half a century would carry a device developed by Okamoto and his team at Condor Instruments, a São Paulo-based startup. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-wristwatch-device-enables-health-astronauts.html Space Exploration Wed, 13 May 2026 23:40:01 EDT news697904627 The US Government has released a new trove of documents on cases of "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAPs)—many of which would have been described in the past as unidentified flying objects or UFOs—including photos, videos and reports of unexplained events sighted in the sky and in space. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-ufo-skies.html Astronomy Wed, 13 May 2026 23:00:01 EDT news697886684 The Southwest Research Institute-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instruments aboard ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft and NASA's Europa Clipper made unique observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in late 2025. SwRI leads the UVS instruments on both spacecraft, simultaneously imaging both hemispheres of the comet and detecting the comet's ultraviolet emissions. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-dual-spacecraft-capture-hemispheres-interstellar.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 13 May 2026 14:20:01 EDT news697900019 You're an anaerobic microbe sunbathing on a Martian beach billions of years ago listening to the small waves hit the shoreline as you take in the perchlorates in the Martian regolith. This is because while Mars is warm and wet, it still lacks sufficient oxygen, so anaerobic life like yourself doesn't need oxygen to survive. You're chilling for several hours and eventually notice the water hasn't touched you. You remember overhearing some otherworldly fellows who briefly landed and discussed the landscape didn't look well formed, so they left. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-martian-tides-strong-ancient-landscape.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 13 May 2026 11:31:31 EDT news697890459 When you think of outer space, you're likely picturing stars, planets and moons. But much of space is filled with clouds of gas, plasma and stardust—known as interstellar clouds. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-stardust-antarctic-ice-reveals-tens.html Astronomy Wed, 13 May 2026 10:00:50 EDT news697885201 Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, is also the solar system's largest satellite, even larger than the planet Mercury. It is also the only celestial body aside from Earth (and the gas giants) to have an intrinsic magnetic field. As if this didn't make the icy body interesting enough, scientists also predict that it has a massive interior ocean with more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. At present, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is in transit to Ganymede to explore it for signs of habitability. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-geysers-juice-mission-explore-ganymede.html Astrobiology Tue, 12 May 2026 20:40:03 EDT news697810079 If you've ever taken an introductory astronomy class, you've probably seen the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram. This graph maps out the life cycle of stars by plotting their temperature against their luminosity, and has been a "cheat sheet" for stellar astrophysics for over a century. But the universe is full of more than just stars, and a new paper in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific by Gabriel Steward and Matthew Hedman of the University of Idaho, attempts to do for the density and mass of all objects what the HR diagram did for the lifecycle of stars—provide a coherent, visual map to represent them. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-graph-universe.html Astronomy Tue, 12 May 2026 18:20:03 EDT news697810264 Using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside have produced the most detailed map of the cosmic web ever made, tracing the network of galaxies all the way back to when the universe was one billion years old. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-jwst-cosmic-web-universe-billion.html Astronomy Tue, 12 May 2026 09:49:18 EDT news697797890 Birds of prey and vultures (raptors) play a vital role in ecosystems, both as top predators and key scavengers. However, compared to many other bird species, raptor populations are declining faster. This is because they need large areas to live in, have low population densities, and reproduce slowly. For these reasons, they are vulnerable to human impacts like farming with pesticides, electrocution, collision with wind turbines, or poaching. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-birds-prey-south-africa-years.html Ecology Mon, 11 May 2026 23:20:03 EDT news697717731 With a small blue crane, four researchers hoist a cylindrical fuel cell, which looks like a stack of flattened silver and gold soda cans bundled together, into the air and lower it into a rectangular cart on wheels. A tangle of tubes and wires spirals away from the system, where nearly 270 sensors and 1,000 components are nestled inside. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nasa-fuel-cell-pave-energy.html Space Exploration Mon, 11 May 2026 19:40:03 EDT news697729122