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. Scientists have discovered that there is ice deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus and want to find out what form it takes and how it behaves. They cannot dig for it and transport it all the way back to Earth, so they do the next best thing: recreate those extreme conditions in the lab. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scientists-strange-ice-interiors-neptune.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:40:08 EDT news708352479 Scientists were shocked when they received the first images of Martian gullies. They were even more shocked as those gullies appeared to change over time. Their similarities to gullies seen on Earth were uncanny, but all of Earth's gullies are formed by water runoff, and Mars is too cold and has too sparse an atmosphere to have liquid water on its surface. Whatever has been causing those changing gullies couldn't have been water, so what was it? A new paper from Apolline Leclef of the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale at Université Paris-Saclay and her colleagues, available on the arXiv preprint server, shows how they are likely caused by CO2 frost turning into a fluid. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-gullies-mars.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:20:12 EDT news708341582 NASA is bringing artificial intelligence to the study of the moon, helping researchers transform how they analyze its surface. In an ongoing collaboration with IBM Research and several academic institutions, NASA has launched the NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model, one of the first open-source AI models built specifically for lunar science. The model, trained primarily on data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), is hosted publicly on Hugging Face for anyone to use, with the complete codebase available on GitHub for testing and experimentation. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-years-lunar-ice-craters.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:40:09 EDT news708340141 In early 2017 and 2023, California experienced two catastrophic and record-breaking floods that caused billions of dollars in damage, triggered mudslides and forced thousands of people to evacuate. Why this happened left scientists scratching their heads. Both disasters struck during La Niña conditions, which normally bring drier-than-normal weather to California. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-atmospheric-events-world-triggered-devastating.html Earth Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:50:01 EDT news708256790 It is thought the sun may have engulfed a super-Earth-sized planet early in its history. Now, a new study has gone a step further, suggesting that such an event may have left behind detectable clues inside the sun that could still be visible today. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fingerprints-sun-reveal-swallowed-planet.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:20:02 EDT news708248158 Mercury's surface is riddled with wrinkles, evidence of a once-larger planet that has shrunk over time. A new study finds that Mercury may have contracted 10% to 30% more than previously thought—a loss of nearly 12 miles (19 kilometers) of total diameter since the planet formed—due to debris from impact craters obscuring signs of the planet's shrinking. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-mercury-thought.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:00:05 EDT news707736901 An international team led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has developed an innovative method to identify stars that have consumed the planets around them. The technique detects variations in the abundance of beryllium, a relatively rare chemical element, and could open a new window into studying the evolution of planetary systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-beryllium-stars-swallowed-rocky-planets.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:30:01 EDT news708191461 The Anthropocene became part of the zeitgeist after Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen launched the idea in 2000. This is the notion that a crescendo of human impacts has recently propelled Earth out of the relatively stable climatic conditions of the Holocene epoch, during which human civilization developed and flourished, to produce a new kind of planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-anthropocene-geological-epoch-idea-world.html Earth Sciences Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:20:06 EDT news708170815 New research has revealed that ancient builders deliberately transported enormous 25-tonne stones across at least 18 kilometers (11 miles) to build Britain's tallest surviving prehistoric stone row—the iconic Devil's Arrows. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-prehistoric-builders-hauled-tonne-stones.html Archaeology Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:10:01 EDT news708104941 Halley's Comet captures the imagination in a way that few other astronomical objects do. When it last made its approach toward the sun (admittedly when this author, who is now middle-aged, was 1 year old in 1986), humanity responded with a fleet of spacecraft known informally as the "Halley Armada." Yet because of the comet's trajectory, those spacecraft were only able to visit their target for a fleeting few hours, leaving planetary scientists wanting more. Now, a new paper by researchers at Khalifa University and their co-authors, available on the arXiv preprint server, describes a mission plan that would allow a spacecraft to rendezvous with this best-known comet for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-mission-rendezvous-halley-comet.html Space Exploration Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:00:05 EDT news708088306 The year is 2060. London shudders through months of Nordic winter freezes. Across northern Europe, oak and beech forests wither under severe frost and drought, while cereal yields collapse from temperatures plunging as low as 27 degrees Fahrenheit below today's averages. In U.S. coastal cities such as Miami and Charleston, South Carolina, sea levels have risen three feet (about 0.9 meters), with routine tidal flooding washing away streets. Meanwhile, in the North Atlantic, deep-sea nutrients remain trapped on the ocean floor, starving plankton blooms and triggering a cascade of die-offs from cod to migrating whales. The ocean's engine has stalled. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-current-events-scientists-eye-atlantic.html Earth Sciences Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:40:02 EDT news708079022 We usually think of auroras as beautiful lights in the night sky. I see them as visible traces of a connection between the sun, Earth's magnetic field and the atmosphere. This led me to an origin-of-life question: Could the planetary structure that produces auroras also have organized chemical reactions on early Earth? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-early-earth-auroral-belts-natural.html Astrobiology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 20:40:04 EDT news707989182 After an eight-year journey, a spacecraft carrying European and Japanese probes began the monthslong, high-risk approach to Mercury on Thursday to study the sun-scorched planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-spacecraft-bound-mercury-tricky.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 05 Sep 2026 06:20:01 EDT news707723332 Two Mercury-bound spacecraft left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home stretch of their nearly decade-long voyage to the solar system's smallest and closest-to-the-sun planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-pair-spacecraft-closer-mercury-decade.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:30:02 EDT news707656831 Recent observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a giant, evolving, 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn's south pole. This discovery marks the first time a large, regular-sided jet pattern has been observed in the planet's southern hemisphere. The feature appears remarkably similar to Saturn's famous hexagon at its north pole but is also distinctly different, suggesting scientists may be witnessing a new atmospheric phenomenon developing on the iconic gas giant. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hubble-tracks-decagon-encircling-saturn.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:40:07 EDT news707580122 Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets—comets in other solar systems—orbiting a young star similar to our sun. The observations point to a possible mechanism for how water might be transported from the cold outer regions of the planetary system to regions where planets form. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-young-sunlike-reveals-comets-planets.html Astrobiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:20:01 EDT news707564222 More than 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, an ancient icy object is slowly awakening. As it drifts inward through the solar system, the frozen body known as Centaur 450P/LONEOS has begun releasing gas and dust—behavior more commonly associated with comets than with centaurs, the small icy objects that typically orbit between Jupiter and Neptune. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-saturn-encounter-distant-centaur-path.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:00:04 EDT news707499541 Jupiter hosts more than 100 moons, with most attention focused on the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. This is primarily due to their active geology, including Io being the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system and Europa having a vast subsurface liquid-water ocean beneath its icy crust. However, Jupiter's smaller, lesser-known moons could provide astronomers with key insights into the history of the solar system because they have remained largely unchanged, unlike the Galilean moons. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-esa-juice-probe-dark-jovian.html Space Exploration Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:40:05 EDT news707400639 When exploring solar system bodies for signs of past or present life, scientists have mainly focused on planets that have (or had) a liquid surface similar to Earth's. However, mounting evidence suggests that the ingredients for life may exist in a very different environment: the highly acidic clouds that blanket Venus. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-peptides-harsh-venus-conditions.html Astrobiology Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:00:10 EDT news707388361 Some of the strangest weather in the solar system doesn't happen on Earth or even in Jupiter's Great Red Spot—it happens in the interiors of ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. Specifically, scientists have long believed that, at certain pressures and temperatures, it literally rains diamonds inside these planets. For the first time, scientists have mimicked the process they believe creates this phenomenon. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-scientists-diamond-secret-ice-giants.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 29 Aug 2026 20:30:04 EDT news707038082 The evolutionary histories of Earth and Mercury differ fundamentally. The smallest planet, closest to the sun, likely began cooling early on, much like a setting pudding: As early as about 1 billion years after its formation, Mercury's volcanic activity came to a halt, and a solid, continuous "rock skin" formed on the planet's surface. Earth's crust, on the other hand, is still in motion: Volcanism and plate tectonics are constantly stirring up the "Earth pudding." Exactly what Mercury's unique volcanic past looked like and how it shaped its current appearance remain unclear. However, researchers can gain important clues from the composition of its surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mercury-crust-deeper-hotter-volcanic.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news707135642 On Sunday, Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The observatory will join the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, and the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, in scanning the vastness of space and potentially finding answers to longstanding mysteries of the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-telescope-roman-reveal-secrets-universe.html Astronomy Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:40:03 EDT news707113621 The latest Swedish-led search for technosignatures in the form of Dyson spheres has again come up empty-handed. The two latest stellar candidates in the hunt for such hypothetical extraterrestrial technology have been eliminated as Dyson spheres. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-nasa-webb-telescope-dyson-sphere.html Astronomy Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:00:03 EDT news707038166 When engineers look to nature for inspiration, they often turn to living systems. The flight of birds has influenced aircraft design, gecko feet inspired new adhesives and lotus leaves led to the development of self-cleaning surfaces. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-geomimicry-framework-sustainable-materials.html General Physics Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:27:53 EDT news707038047 Stanford researchers have offered an explanation for why some sizzling, lava-covered worlds nestled tightly around their stars can retain their atmospheres. At such close quarters, intense stellar radiation should strip away a planet's air. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-lava-exoplanets-retain-atmospheres-billions.html Astrobiology Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:40:04 EDT news706957007 Planets form from disks of gas and dust around young stars, but the gas needed for growth does not last forever. New observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) now offer a new view of how this gas escapes and how the process changes as young planetary systems develop. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-jwst-reveals-planets.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Aug 2026 17:50:01 EDT news706897742 As wildfire smoke plumes travel thousands of miles, sunlight and atmospheric chemistry bleach their color, strip away their campfire aroma and add them to the mix of urban smog. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-flames-haze-wildfire-health-ways.html Environment Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:40:03 EDT news706877882 A NASA-led team hopes to take a shortcut to direct imaging of extrasolar Earth-like planets. The idea is to use what they call a hybrid telescope composed of an orbital starshade coupled with the next-generation extremely large ground-based optical telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-nasa-starshade-enable-astronomers-image.html Space Exploration Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:20:01 EDT news706784267 Around 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was little more than a giant ball of gas and dust. Over the next few million years, this "solar nebula" underwent a huge transformation, flattening into a disk of matter that then condensed to form the central sun and orbiting planets. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-meteorite-magnetism-sun.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:10:01 EDT news706810983 In the opening scene of American writer Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future," a heat wave combined with a breakdown of the electrical grid in India kills 20 million people. The devastation causes the world's nations to unite to combat climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-world-inches-catastrophic-climate-events.html Environment Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:42:53 EDT news706794146