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. Climate change is exacerbating rainfall, flooding and sea-level rises in coastal and low-lying areas. During the past few years, disastrous floods have swept through Lismore in New South Wales, Northern Queensland, and the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Large waves have pounded beaches, causing erosion in Byron Bay and Wamberal Beach in NSW and Lancelin, Western Australia. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-backlash-swift-authorities-retreat-coast.html Earth Sciences Sat, 30 May 2026 12:30:02 EDT news699268480 Some 350,000 years ago, the center of New Zealand's North Island appeared much different than the mountainous, scrub-covered landscape it is today. Amid a glacial period, temperatures were colder and conditions harsher. Vast beech and podocarp forests blanketed the region, providing habitat for abundant native birdlife. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-supereruption-nz-years.html Earth Sciences Sat, 30 May 2026 11:00:01 EDT news699097293 Highlights from the last week of May, 2026: A key climate tipping point is disrupting the Arctic Ocean food chain (more of a lowlight, I guess). Scuba-diving tourism may not be the benefit to coral reef systems that we once thought, and might actually be unsustainable. And an experimental mRNA vaccine showed promising results against strains of Ebola. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-saturday-citations-failure-cellular-mortality.html Other Sat, 30 May 2026 09:20:02 EDT news699280662 Understanding the dynamics of how water moves is deceptively simple in concept and endlessly complex in practice. Real-world marine environments are anything but controlled: weather, seasons, and geography change constantly. Yet understanding water movement is a critical aspect in areas of study like marine biology, coastal and environmental science, and even policy around how we recover from natural disasters. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-gulf-quest-current-particle-tide.html Earth Sciences Fri, 29 May 2026 16:00:03 EDT news699268815 New research reveals a potential link between the gut microbes of a fish and global ocean processes, offering new insight into how marine ecosystems help regulate ocean chemistry and the marine carbon cycle. The study, titled "Symbiotic bacteria may support calcium carbonate precipitation in the Gulf toadfish," is published in the journal PLOS Biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-fish-microbe-partnership-ocean-health.html Ecology Fri, 29 May 2026 15:40:01 EDT news699281453 Past research has indicated Mars's largest northern basin, Utopia Planitia, was once the location of a large body of water, but details surrounding when this body of water may have existed have not been resolved. Researchers have now identified a ring of minerals in the region that have helped them string together a timeline of what happened there. The new study, published in Nature Communications, provides details about the ocean's timeline and what it says about life on Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mars-manganese-bathtub-reveals-ancient.html Astrobiology Fri, 29 May 2026 11:50:26 EDT news699274173 Think about a census. You could photograph every house in the country and produce a beautiful map, but without knocking on doors and asking questions, you'd know almost nothing about the people living in them. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-eyes-universe.html Astronomy Fri, 29 May 2026 11:00:01 EDT news699267722 Plastic waste poses an urgent problem for the planet's ecosystems, especially in waterways. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter Earth's oceans every year, and plastic has been found in every part of the ocean, including at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-bio-stickers-plastic-breakdown-marine.html Biochemistry Fri, 29 May 2026 10:00:07 EDT news699265681 There is a forever chemical lurking in the world's oceans that could be fundamentally altering the biology of marine life before it even hatches. PFOS, a notorious member of the PFAS family of chemicals, is known for its ability to bioaccumulate, binding specifically to proteins in the blood and liver. While it's long been recognized as a pollutant, scientists are only beginning to understand how it changes an organism from the inside out. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-chemical-fish-hatch-reveals.html Plants & Animals Fri, 29 May 2026 09:20:01 EDT news699262973 Reducing methane emissions will slow climate change but could also slow the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer, new research from the University of Reading shows. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-climate-hidden-methane-reshapes-ozone.html Earth Sciences Fri, 29 May 2026 09:00:06 EDT news699205501 Conservationists are in a race against time to prevent one of the world's rarest island plants from disappearing forever, after seeds collected from the only surviving wild Dendroseris neriifolia tree arrived at the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Kew Wakehurst in Sussex last month. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-kind-tree-cliffside-botanic-gardens.html Plants & Animals Fri, 29 May 2026 06:00:02 EDT news699206581 The scorching weather that has smashed temperature records across Europe this week shows the growing number and intensity of heat waves on the continent. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-europe.html Environment Fri, 29 May 2026 05:40:02 EDT news699247486 According to two recently published studies led by scientists from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Brazilian Amazon is already beginning to experience scenarios previously projected for the coming decades, including longer dry seasons and changes in rainfall patterns. Without integrated policies and initiatives to combat climate change, the situation could rapidly intensify, posing risks to biodiversity, the replenishment of natural water reservoirs, and the functioning of the forest. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-longer-droughts-rainfall-amazon.html Environment Thu, 28 May 2026 19:20:04 EDT news699207661 Regime shifts in the Atlantic Ocean, which have subsequently affected the Baltic Sea, are also impacting moths in Lapland, according to a new study conducted at the University of Turku in Finland. The paper is published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-oceanic-regime-shifts-affect-subarctic.html Plants & Animals Thu, 28 May 2026 17:40:04 EDT news699203882 Using old satellite radar techniques, scientists have developed a new way of measuring the true extent of an understudied and crucial region of the Antarctic sea-ice system for the first time. The Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) around Antarctica is the "outer edge" of the sea ice, forming a nearly 200-kilometer-wide ring of ice floes affected by waves from the extremely rough Southern Ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-miz-ing-action-antarctic-sea.html Earth Sciences Thu, 28 May 2026 17:20:04 EDT news699193701 Despite the intensity of modern exploration, the eastern Mediterranean continues to yield unexpected discoveries. On the small Greek island of Kastellorizo, researchers have documented a previously unknown cave cricket thriving within a network of man-made tunnels. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-balrog-tunnels-scientists-cave-cricket.html Plants & Animals Thu, 28 May 2026 17:00:04 EDT news699193681 The motion of the ocean may be the key to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so University of Houston researchers set out to determine which U.S. coastlines are best suited for the process in a new study. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-gulf-coast-ocean-technology-carbon.html Environment Thu, 28 May 2026 16:40:03 EDT news699200721 The proton sharks showed up on a Friday. In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA's Parker Solar Probe in 2020, a small group of scientists were scrolling through visualizations of their data showing solar winds. Suddenly, a weird shape flashed on the screen: Instead of the usual rounded blob of solar-wind protons, this distribution had a long, flattened, head-like structure jutting out to one side. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-solar-secret-hammerheads-space.html Astronomy Thu, 28 May 2026 16:00:04 EDT news699192481 A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the Antarctic ice sheet became more sensitive to climate forcing following a major shift in Earth's ice age cycles about one million years ago, providing new insight into how ice sheets respond to long-term climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-sensitivity-antarctic-ice-climate-sharply.html Earth Sciences Thu, 28 May 2026 15:20:07 EDT news699191563 The Namibian genocide was one of the first genocides of the 20th century. Between 1904 and 1908, tens of thousands of Ovaherero and Nama people were killed under German colonial rule. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-unearthing-namibia-forgotten-genocide-forensic.html Archaeology Thu, 28 May 2026 13:40:02 EDT news699189902 From Australia's remote deserts to the surface of Mars, geological mapping underpins how we understand landscapes, natural resources, and the processes that shape our planet and others beyond it. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-seabed-mars-geological.html Earth Sciences Thu, 28 May 2026 12:40:01 EDT news699186003 Nearly 50 years ago, a puzzling earthquake beneath northern Utah jolted scientists' understanding of how Earth works. Now, research from the University of Utah confirms that the mysterious event was real, and part of a rare class of earthquakes occurring far deeper beneath the continental crust than scientists once believed possible. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-deep-beneath-utah-rare-mantle.html Earth Sciences Thu, 28 May 2026 12:20:05 EDT news699186242 About a billion years ago, Earth started to come into its own. It was past the awkwardness of its younger years full of growing pains and turmoil: comet strikes and slimy water, including the Great Oxidation Event that flipped the world upside down. Roughly a billion years ago, the planet began to advance and mature, with plant life developing about 700 million years ago, but still with the occasional wild climate parties to keep things interesting. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-supercontinent-ancient-earth-snowball-phase.html Astrobiology Thu, 28 May 2026 11:20:04 EDT news699181908 New research published in BMC Biology helps to fill in questions about the so-called "Furongian gap" from about 497 million to 485 million years ago, when paleontologists previously thought there were far fewer fossils than periods before or after it. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-forgotten-museum-fossil-rewrite-animal.html Evolution Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:02 EDT news699094381 An irreversible shift in the chemical makeup of the Arctic Ocean driven by climate change is disrupting the region's food chain, a study suggests. Widespread loss of Arctic sea ice has led to a sharp fall in levels of a key nutrient, affecting populations of plankton, fish, seabirds and marine mammals, say researchers. Their analysis reveals that exposure to sunlight of vast shallow regions of the ocean previously covered by ice fuels a process that breaks down the nutrient—nitrate—and removes it from seawater. The study appears in Communications Earth & Environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-arctic-ocean-food-chain-disrupted.html Ecology Thu, 28 May 2026 05:00:04 EDT news699117661 SpaceX Starship launches are on hold pending an investigation into last week's test flight. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spacex-starship-rockets-grounded-pending.html Space Exploration Thu, 28 May 2026 04:53:27 EDT news699162676 When a team of researchers recorded a low thundering underneath the surface of the Hudson River, they thought they were hearing the muffled rumble of trains. A closer look and listen led to a much more interesting discovery: The thunder came from Atlantic sturgeon—an iconic and endangered species—spawning in the depths of the river. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-newly-thunder-atlantic-sturgeons-awe.html Plants & Animals Wed, 27 May 2026 19:00:01 EDT news699118321 Waves of higher, warmer water move eastward across the Pacific Ocean a few months before an El Niño emerges. Several have shown up in 2026 satellite data. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-giant-pacific-el-nio-weather.html Earth Sciences Wed, 27 May 2026 15:00:01 EDT news699106488 From the revived corpse of Frankenstein's monster to the disembodied hand, "Thing," in the Addams Family, reanimated tissue is one of the most enduring images in science fiction. It turns out, that image has some basis in nature, according to the recent discovery of a mysterious creature that lives on the seafloor that scientists are calling a "real-life zombie." https://phys.org/news/2026-05-severed-piece-sea-cucumber-die.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:14 EDT news699090181 Earth was mostly devoid of oxygen for much of its 4.5 billion year lifetime. That is, until certain processes started to allow for the eventual buildup of oxygen up to the levels we have now (around 21% of the atmosphere). While scientists have found evidence of the approximate timescales of rises in oxygen over time and are aware of some of the mechanisms behind it, the main driver behind Earth's long-term oxygenation is still unclear. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-earth-oxygen-rich-atmosphere-owe.html Earth Sciences Wed, 27 May 2026 12:15:54 EDT news699102077