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. Is the universe as stable as we think it is? That's one of the big questions that particle physicists worldwide are preparing to answer with the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC—the world's most powerful particle accelerator—when its upgrade is completed in about four years. In the meantime, researchers, including a cohort at the University of Michigan, are working to sharpen their analytical tools and techniques to make the most of the LHC's current and future data. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-boosts-sensitivity-higgs-signatures.html General Physics Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:10:01 EDT news706463461 A hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) system modeled on grasshopper behavior could help allocate medical resources, transport and power during an urban emergency, according to research in the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management. Tests of the new hybrid model on historical emergency data sets show it to be highly effective. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-grasshopper-ai-boosts-emergency-resource.html Environment Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:40:04 EDT news706275539 The mantle, a rocky layer accounting for more than 80% of Earth's volume, circulates at rates of only a few centimeters per year. This circulation drives plate tectonics and influences major geological phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. Despite its fundamental importance, the history of mantle circulation remains poorly understood because direct observations of the deep Earth are extremely limited. Currently, scientists rely on geological records of past surface movements and geophysical imaging methods, including seismic observations, to infer the mantle's structure and behavior. However, reconstructing historical mantle flow remains a major challenge. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-reconstructs-hidden-history-earth.html Earth Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:20:05 EDT news706258612 While humans are inherently social beings, they can interact and connect with others in very different ways. For instance, while some people tend to be more altruistic, others are less prone to helping their friends, acquaintances or even complete strangers, particularly when it comes at a personal cost. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-early-hardship-oxytocin-altruism.html Social Sciences Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:01 EDT news705663792 Invented languages tend to be the stuff of fantasy or science fiction worlds. But as a child, you may have made one up yourself. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-elvish-klingon-pig-latin-languages.html Social Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 03:40:01 EDT news705670809 What if scientists could get a taste of discovery as soon as their experiment finishes? Thanks to a new machine learning tool called DONUT, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are transforming how experiments are run at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-real-ray-analysis-donut-materials.html Nanophysics Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:20:01 EDT news705682545 Humans trust dogs to help find missing people, and bees to pollinate their crops. But scientists still don't fully understand how these animals use their extraordinary sense of smell to locate the source of an odor. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-decoding-reveals-odor.html Ecology Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:20:05 EDT news705657481 Fluorescent dyes have long been used in biological research to identify and visualize structures within living cells. Although effective, they have several drawbacks, including altering the cells under study, limiting the number of structures that can be examined at once and reducing measurement accuracy. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-ramanomics-major-obstacle-cells.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:40:01 EDT news705240841 Ants make up one of the most diverse groups of animals on the planet, with many species boasting remarkable physical abilities and social behaviors, and an overall species richness that far exceeds that of mammals. Various types of ants can carry up to one hundred times their weight or forage hundreds of meters from their nest, the equivalent of a human carrying thousands of kilograms and walking hundreds of kilometers. These feats have inspired researchers to study not only the anatomy that makes them possible but also how ants use these capabilities to forage and explore. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-random-physics-individual-ant-motion.html Plants & Animals Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:00:07 EDT news705155701 Typhoons pose significant threats, with sudden, dangerous waves that endanger ships, offshore platforms and coastal infrastructure in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Current typhoon forecasting methods sometimes underestimate the largest waves during typhoons, but researchers in China have designed a new model that may offer improvements. Their new study, published in Ocean Engineering, describes how the model combines physics guidance with data-driven learning to improve typhoon forecasting. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-coupled-ai-physics-typhoon-height.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:40:08 EDT news705148156 Songbirds, birds belonging to the Passeriformes order, are best known for their ability to produce complex musical sounds. Yet some songbird species also have another remarkable skill: They can easily remove the tough layer covering seeds (i.e., the husk) before swallowing their nutritious interiors. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-songbirds-sharper-de-husk-seeds.html Plants & Animals Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:04 EDT news705148144 Ants live in highly organized colonies and cooperate daily to tackle a wide range of problems. Their striking group behaviors have fascinated biologists for centuries and even inspired the development of various artificial intelligence (AI) systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ant-teams-gravity-based-puzzle.html Plants & Animals Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:20:10 EDT news704987373 How does the brain learn? Does it acquire new knowledge by creating new neural pathways or by strengthening existing connections? A new study from Bar-Ilan University offers evidence in favor of the latter, suggesting that learning is driven primarily by changes in the strength of existing neural connections rather than by expanding the brain's underlying architecture. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-stronger-neural-networks.html General Physics Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:20:02 EDT news704633900 Spin waves (SWs), or magnons, are collective excitations of magnetization in magnetic materials arising from electron spins. They have attracted considerable attention as information carriers and have shown promise in logic circuits, memory devices and physical neural networks. Among the emerging platforms for manipulating SWs are magnonic crystals (MCs), engineered magnetic materials with periodic structures designed to control magnon propagation. These periodic structures give rise to magnonic band structures and mode profiles, much like semiconductor crystals control electron transport. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-inverse-2d-magnonic-crystals-widen.html Nanophysics Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:00:07 EDT news704470382 Seoul National University (SNU) College of Engineering announced that a research team led by Professor Jeong Woo Han of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has developed a new nanostructured catalyst with up to 14.4 times the greenhouse gas decomposition performance of conventional commercial catalysts. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nanomace-catalyst-boosts-greenhouse-gas.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:40:04 EDT news704458089 Complex simulations—the most intricate of their kind to date—carried out by an international research team led by scientists at Heidelberg University's Institute for Physical Chemistry, have revealed how water governs the way protons move through it. Using their modeling, researchers from Cambridge (U.K.), Bochum, Dijon (France) and Heidelberg were able to trace, in full quantum detail, the movements of a proton shared among six water molecules. At its core, the work addresses how a proton moves through water: not as a single particle drifting along, but by "hopping" from one molecule to the next. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-local-asymmetry-proton-molecules-simulations.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:40:04 EDT news704385621 A new computer model is one of the first artificial intelligence tools to advance scientific discovery in agriculture and biogeochemistry and is 50 times more efficient than its predecessors, according to a study that offers a proof-of-principle for how AI might be used to shed light on obscure biological processes. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-soil-carbon-effectively-efficient-ai.html Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:00:06 EDT news704374501 Quasars, distant cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, are among the most luminous objects in the universe. While not uncommon, their brightness can make it difficult to accurately measure the galaxies they reside in. This means scientists must use gravitational lensing to assist in analyzing these bright objects, a method that relies on studying how an object's strong gravity bends light around its host galaxy. Yet despite their own powerful gravity, quasars that can act as lenses are rare. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quasar-lenses-emerge-ai-scan.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:20:07 EDT news704377501 Neural networks have transformed how machines find patterns in data, from recognizing faces in photos to predicting the shapes of proteins. So far, all of this progress has been made on ordinary classical computers, but with quantum computers now edging into practical use, there is a real possibility that neural networks could tap into distinctly quantum effects and operate in ways that classical machines never could. So far, however, neural networks have proven far more difficult to run on quantum hardware. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-neural-networks-hardware.html Quantum Physics Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:50:01 EDT news704365485 Why can zebrafish regenerate damaged gut nerves while humans largely cannot? Michigan State University researchers have developed a new research tool that allows them to remove gut neurons in zebrafish and watch them regenerate in real time, helping scientists investigate one of regenerative biology's biggest questions. The work is published in the journal Stem Cell Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-zebrafish-rebuild-brain-networks-days.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:30:01 EDT news704038503 In recent years, research using artificial intelligence to predict material properties has advanced rapidly. Neural network quantum Monte Carlo methods have attracted attention as highly accurate simulation techniques. However, their extremely high computational cost has limited their application to small molecular systems. This study introduces a new computational method that overcomes this limitation. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-neural-networks-larger-quantum-simulations.html Quantum Physics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:40:07 EDT news703946701 Many modern technologies, from optical communications and artificial intelligence (AI) hardware to advanced sensors and medical imaging, depend on photonic and semiconductor devices that precisely control the interaction between light and electrons. Designing these devices, however, remains a major challenge because existing simulation tools often require researchers to choose between modeling an entire device or capturing the detailed behavior of electrons. Few can do both within the same model. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-simulation-tool-generation-photonic-quantum.html Quantum Physics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:40:02 EDT news703923302 Some researchers are leaning into biology for inspiration in computing. In particular, neuromorphic computing offers a brain-inspired approach to hardware that replaces traditional binary processing with systems that function more like neurons and synapses. Now, a new study, published in Nature Communications, describes an innovative design for a fluidic memristor that uses its own self-heating mechanism to induce a history-dependent memory effect. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-brain-nanopore-device-current-memory.html Nanophysics Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:40:03 EDT news703417766 Researchers have demonstrated a novel AI model that can predict which DNA molecules bind with other DNA molecules. A more thorough understanding of these hypercomplex binding relationships has utility in applications ranging from biomedical diagnostic tools to DNA computing. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-scientists-dna-sequences.html Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:50:02 EDT news703250253 Raindrops form inside clouds when tiny particles of water collide and stick together, forming larger droplets that eventually fall to Earth. This process is hard to model accurately, with current approaches either imprecise or computationally intensive. Better simulations of raindrop formation could help improve climate and weather models. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-machine-raindrop-formation.html Environment Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:20:02 EDT news702729439 Researchers at the University of Tokyo and the Innovation Center of NanoMedicine (iCONM) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) approach that identifies the morphology of nanoparticles in liquid using data from standard nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA), a widely used technique for particle sizing. The method achieved classification accuracies exceeding 80% for non-spherical nanoparticles without requiring modification of existing instruments. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-deep-reveals-nanoparticle-routine-tracking.html Nanomaterials Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:20:06 EDT news702657911 Clarkson University researchers have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can uncover the mathematical equations governing complex and chaotic systems directly from data. The technology, called KANDy—short for Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for Dynamics—is designed to help scientists understand systems that are difficult to describe using traditional methods because they are noisy, nonlinear or highly unpredictable. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-tool-equations-complex.html Mathematics Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:05 EDT news702638959 Are we alone in the universe? Consider mysterious "extraterrestrial" radio signals. Unexplained gases on other planets. Things mistaken for UFOs. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-disturbingly-easy-ai-aliens.html Astronomy Tue, 07 Jul 2026 07:00:03 EDT news702619561 Tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is the world's deadliest single-agent infection, responsible for 1.23 million deaths in 2024, according to the World Health Organization. The bacterium's unique outer cell membrane is notoriously hard to penetrate, making few drugs, including antibiotics, effective in treating the disease. However, a research team led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a pair of techniques that can vastly speed the search for better tuberculosis drugs. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-world-deadliest-infection-pac-ai.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:20:04 EDT news702571476 Brown University researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence method for predicting the rate at which materials used in controlled drug-release systems release therapeutic agents. The new method could slash the development time for new therapeutic patches, bandages and implants. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-physics-ai-drug-patches-bandages.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:00:13 EDT news702556261