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. A new tool makes it possible to screen millions of tiny protein fragments and select those that can be recognized by the immune system. The CIC biomaGUNE Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials has developed epiGPTope, a system that uses machine learning to generate and classify epitopes, in collaboration with the company Multiverse Computing. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ai-epitope-library-vaccines-immunotherapy.html Biotechnology Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:00:08 EDT news694786861 The surface of Earth is finite. We can measure it. If it was expanding, then its size would grow with time. And once again, good ol' Earth helps us understand what the universe might be doing beyond our observable horizon. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-universe-infinite.html Astronomy Mon, 24 Nov 2025 10:40:03 EST news683203202 Researchers have harnessed nonlocal artificial materials to create optical systems that emulate parallel spaces, wormholes, and multiple realities. A single material acts as two distinct optical media or devices simultaneously, allowing light to experience different properties based on entry boundaries. Demonstrations include invisible optical tunnels and coexisting optical devices, opening new avenues for compact, multifunctional optical devices by introducing nonlocality as a new degree of freedom for light manipulation. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-nonlocality-enabled-photonic-analogies-wormholes.html General Physics Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:41:00 EDT news680258455 Few ideas in modern science have reshaped our understanding of reality more profoundly than space-time—the interwoven fabric of space and time at the heart of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-space.html Astronomy Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:13:03 EDT news675339181 This week, researchers pinned down the age of a complete Homo-genus skull found in Greece in 1960 to at least 286,000 years old. Medical researchers reported that the majority of chronic pain patients discontinue cannabis use within one year. And engineers prototyped solar trees, a new solar technology designed with natural tree morphology that can be incorporated into natural branches in the upper canopies of trees while allowing light to penetrate to underlying vegetation. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-saturday-citations-general-gas-giants.html Other Sat, 23 Aug 2025 08:00:03 EDT news675081846 We're often told it is "unscientific" or "meaningless" to ask what happened before the Big Bang. But a new paper by FQxI cosmologist Eugene Lim, of King's College London, UK, and astrophysicists Katy Clough, of Queen Mary University of London, UK, and Josu Aurrekoetxea, at Oxford University, UK, published in Living Reviews in Relativity, proposes a way forward: using complex computer simulations to numerically (rather than exactly) solve Einstein's equations for gravity in extreme situations. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-big-method.html Astronomy Thu, 21 Aug 2025 08:48:11 EDT news674984887 The theory of quantum mechanics has transformed daily life since being proposed a century ago, yet how it works remains a mystery—and physicists are deeply divided about what is actually going on, a survey in the journal Nature said Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-physicists-quantum-world-years.html Quantum Physics Wed, 30 Jul 2025 12:59:06 EDT news673099141 A University of Colorado Denver engineer is on the cusp of giving scientists a new tool that can help them turn sci-fi into reality. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-quantum-tool-gamma-ray-lasers.html Quantum Physics Wed, 23 Jul 2025 09:10:05 EDT news672480271 The hunt for habitable worlds has become a hot topic in astronomy. For decades, the search has been focused on planets in the "Goldilocks zone"; that narrow band around a star where water stays liquid, not too hot to boil away, not too cold to freeze solid. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-habitability-earth-likelihood-life.html Astrobiology Fri, 30 May 2025 12:05:32 EDT news667825527 Students learning quantum mechanics are taught the Schrodinger equation and how to solve it to obtain a wave function. But a crucial step is skipped because it has puzzled scientists since the earliest days—how does the real, classical world emerge from, often, a large number of solutions for the wave functions? https://phys.org/news/2024-12-numerical-simulations-classical-world-emerge.html Quantum Physics Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:40:02 EST news654497502 Physicists have long grappled with the question of why the universe was able to support the evolution of intelligent life. The values of the many forces and particles, represented by some 30 so-called fundamental constants, all seem to line up perfectly to enable it. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-physicists-universe-fine-tuned-life.html Astrobiology Wed, 20 Nov 2024 13:10:01 EST news651329279 The chances of intelligent life emerging in our universe—and in any hypothetical ones beyond it—can be estimated by a new theoretical model which has echoes of the famous Drake Equation. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-formula-life-chances-intelligent-universe.html Astronomy Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:00:01 EST news650625236 We live in a golden age for learning about the universe. Our most powerful telescopes have revealed that the cosmos is surprisingly simple on the largest visible scales. Likewise, our most powerful "microscope," the Large Hadron Collider, has found no deviations from known physics on the tiniest scales. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-early-cosmos-balloon-size-mirror.html Astronomy Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:14:01 EDT news648994436 Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, "Where is everybody?" has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as "Fermi's Paradox," it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous and developed very early in Earth's history, and the galaxy is very old and not overly large, aren't there intelligent, advanced extraterrestrials everywhere? In particular, why can't we detect any, and why haven't any (obvious) aliens visited us? https://phys.org/news/2024-08-alien-life.html Astrobiology Mon, 26 Aug 2024 10:10:02 EDT news643885427 An international research team led by Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen has described a new species of giant turtle from the late Pleistocene. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-newly-fossil-giant-turtle-stephen.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:04:03 EDT news629543041 One of the most startling scientific discoveries of recent decades is that physics appears to be fine-tuned for life. This means that for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall within a certain, very narrow range. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-physicists-assume-multiversebut-basic-math.html General Physics Sat, 11 Nov 2023 11:00:01 EST news618836264 When Thomas Hertog was first summoned to Stephen Hawking's office in the late 1990s, there was an instant connection between the young Belgian researcher and the legendary British theoretical physicist. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-stephen-hawking-collaborator-physicist-theory.html General Physics Sun, 28 May 2023 05:01:21 EDT news604468871 The late physicist Stephen Hawking first asked me to work with him to develop "a new quantum theory of the Big Bang" in 1998. What started out as a doctoral project evolved over some 20 years into an intense collaboration that ended only with his passing on March 14 2018. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-stephen-hawking-theory-cosmoshere-reveals.html Astronomy Wed, 10 May 2023 14:08:07 EDT news602946482 The idea of a multiverse consisting of "parallel universes" is a popular science fiction trope, recently explored in the Oscar-winning movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once." However, it is within the realm of scientific possibility. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-multiverse-tackling-theory.html General Physics Thu, 23 Mar 2023 09:47:04 EDT news598783622 Interest in the multiverse theory, suggesting that our universe is just one of many, spiked following the release of the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once." The film follows Evelyn Wang on her journey to connect with versions of herself in parallel universes to ultimately stop the destruction of the multiverse. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-multiverse.html General Physics Wed, 22 Mar 2023 12:35:34 EDT news598707330 In the realm of climate diplomacy, it's the little engine that could, the 80-to-1-odds Kentucky Derby winner, the low-budget multiverse fantasy that came out of nowhere to sweep the Oscars. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-impossible-15c-climate.html Environment Mon, 20 Mar 2023 04:51:00 EDT news598506656 Imagine a universe with extremely strong gravity. Stars would be able to form from very little material. They would be smaller than in our universe and live for a much shorter amount of time. But could life evolve there? It took human life billions of years to evolve on Earth under the pleasantly warm rays from the Sun after all. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-fundamental-constants-universe-fine-tuned-life.html General Physics Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:44:03 EDT news598113841 It's easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organized complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge? https://phys.org/news/2023-03-multiverse-universe-suspiciously-existunless-physicist.html General Physics Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:40:03 EDT news598113601 At the 95th Academy Awards, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan's "Everything Everywhere All at Once" took home wins in acting, editing and directing categories, and also won the coveted best picture award. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-oscars-trend-linguistic-realism-hollywood.html Social Sciences Tue, 14 Mar 2023 12:33:03 EDT news598015982 Is our universe all there is, or could there be more? Is our universe just one of a countless multitude, all together in an all-encompassing multiverse? https://phys.org/news/2023-03-conditions-life-exploring-multiverse.html Astronomy Mon, 06 Mar 2023 13:10:06 EST news597329860 Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow stars, planets and ultimately life to develop? The expansive force of the universe, dark energy, for example, is much weaker than theory suggests it should be—allowing matter to clump together rather than being ripped apart. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-simulation.html General Physics Tue, 22 Nov 2022 14:18:18 EST news588349093 RUDN University astrophysicists have gathered the most important discoveries of modern cosmology from 1917 to our time. The collected data became an introduction to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A in two parts: from 1917 to 1980 and from 1980 to our time. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-astrophysicists-chronicle-history-mathematical-cosmology.html Astronomy Mon, 21 Nov 2022 17:15:03 EST news588273301 Time travel makes regular appearances in popular culture, with innumerable time travel storylines in movies, television and literature. But it is a surprisingly old idea: one can argue that the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles over 2,500 years ago, is the first time travel story. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-theoretical-physicist.html General Physics Tue, 14 Jun 2022 10:40:03 EDT news574421485 New research suggests an unseen "mirror world" of particles that interacts with our world only via gravity that might be the key to solving a major puzzle in cosmology today—the Hubble constant problem. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-ghostly-mirror-world-cosmic-controversy.html General Physics Thu, 19 May 2022 11:18:20 EDT news572177897 If you're a fan of science fiction films, you'll likely be familiar with the idea of alternate universes—hypothetical planes of existence with different versions of ourselves. As far from reality as it sounds, it is a question that scientists have contemplated. So just how well does the fiction stack up with the science? https://phys.org/news/2022-05-physics-multiverse-madness.html Quantum Physics Mon, 09 May 2022 13:20:01 EDT news571320702