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 engineered a nanoscale switch using DNA "origami." Inspired by macroscale mechanical switches, the device achieves long-term functionality without the continuous forcing mechanism that past versions required while remaining capable of fast switching. The paper is published in the journal Science Robotics. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-dna-based-nanoswitch-flip-milliseconds.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:40:09 EDT news702132276 NASA on Tuesday announced new uncrewed missions to aid in the future creation of a lunar surface base, a project beginning to take shape despite recent setbacks. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nasa-robotic-moon-missions-lunar.html Space Exploration Wed, 01 Jul 2026 02:20:02 EDT news702090550 Hopefully, we're about to travel back to the moon relatively soon. And while the original "giant leap for mankind" was taken by a human, Neil Armstrong brought a plethora of other forms of life along with him. Humans themselves are essentially walking ecosystems, and understanding how our microbial companions survive in the harsh environments of space will be critical to ensuring the health and safety of future astronauts, no matter where their giant leaps might be. A new Ph.D. thesis from Tommaso Zaccaria at Radboud University showcases just how well suited terrestrial pathogens actually are to some of these harsh environments. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-earth-microbes-survive-individual-martian.html Astrobiology Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:20:03 EDT news702056221 Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how scientists search for new catalysts—the materials that speed up chemical reactions essential for producing fuels, chemicals and clean energy technologies. However, despite remarkable advances in AI, a major obstacle remains: a lack of comprehensive, standardized data that AI systems can effectively learn from. Solving this data challenge is key to unlocking the next generation of AI-driven catalyst discovery. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ai-powered-platform-lays-foundation.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:20:03 EDT news702033147 NASA is set to launch a daring robotic rescue mission, a long-shot bid to prevent one of its aging telescopes from vanishing into dust. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-robot-aging-swift-telescope.html Space Exploration Tue, 30 Jun 2026 03:47:05 EDT news702009998 For NASA's next generation of deep-space exploration missions, spacecraft may need to refuel in Earth orbit before pushing farther into the solar system. Similar to how a gas pump needs a nozzle to fit your fuel tank, future spacecraft could require a special device in order to fill up before departure, known as a cryocoupler. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-refuel-device-future-space.html Space Exploration Mon, 29 Jun 2026 17:40:01 EDT news701955122 When does a child begin to reason? When do they develop self-control? Are some mental abilities present from birth, while others are acquired through experience? Questions like these have fascinated philosophers, educators and scientists for centuries. Yet surprisingly little is known about how ordinary people think about the development of the mind itself. Do people across cultures think about the mind in similar ways? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-people-worldwide-mental-abilities-inborn.html Social Sciences Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:31:35 EDT news701955070 NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-swift-telescope-falling-earth.html Space Exploration Sun, 28 Jun 2026 11:23:34 EDT news701864592 A research team led by Professor Joongoo Lee in the Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has developed an automated, modular method for assembling reconstituted cell-free systems, which are test-tube systems that can produce proteins outside living cells. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-team-reconstituted-cell-free.html Cell & Microbiology Sat, 27 Jun 2026 10:00:01 EDT news701620201 A mission to raise the orbit of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, at 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pegasus-deploy-link-monthslong-orbit.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:00:03 EDT news701700302 How do you teach someone to look at the moon? Not glance at it, the way we all have on a clear night, but truly read it, the way a geologist reads a hillside. That was the challenge NASA set itself before Artemis II, because when Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen swung around the far side of the moon this April, the first humans to make the journey in more than 50 years, their most valuable scientific instrument was not a camera or a sensor. It was the trained human eye. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-taught-astronauts-moon.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:20:05 EDT news701685901 The NASA Artemis program, now supported by 67 countries under the Artemis Accords, plans to return humans to the moon by 2028. A recent White House Executive Order has gone further, directing NASA to establish a permanent lunar outpost by 2030. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-china-moon-bases-life-earth.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:40:05 EDT news701674081 In September 2025, NASA announced that its Perseverance rover had discovered a potential biosignature, which is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin. A new paper, published in Science Advances, unambiguously confirms the detection of organic carbon, the building blocks of life, in the same two rocks from the Bright Angel formation, and describes in more detail exactly what we can say about that organic matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-carbon-bright-angel-formation-mars.html Astrobiology Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:10:04 EDT news701538061 A research group led by Associate Professor Yoshihiro Nakata from the Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering at the University of Electro-Communications, Japan, in collaboration with researchers from Doshisha University and Otemon Gakuin University, has developed an edible agent capable of social interaction through vocalizations and movement. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-edible-robot-deepens-human-perception.html Social Sciences Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:00:05 EDT news701528403 NASA's Perseverance rover appears as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, a day before the robotic explorer marked a distance milestone, having traveled a full marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers) on the Red Planet. Perseverance reached that distance after five years and four months of driving—on the 1,890th Martian day (sol) of its mission; the previous record holder, NASA's Opportunity rover, took 11 years and two months to reach the same milestone. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-images-perseverance-marathon-milestone-mars.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:20:04 EDT news701535961 Over the past decade, Professor L. Mahadevan's Soft Math Lab at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has helped establish how the ancient Japanese paper arts of folding or cutting can be used to inversely design structures that transform dramatically in shape and function. Now, the researchers have created a new class of shape-changing matter, based not on folds or cuts, but linkages—networks of interconnected scissor mechanisms that collapse into lines and deploy into curved surfaces. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-collapsible-scissored-surfaces-trilogy-metamaterial.html General Physics Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:20:03 EDT news701524441 Researchers have developed a self-driving chemistry lab that can autonomously search through hundreds of catalyst recipes and reaction conditions to identify faster, more selective and more programmable ways to make important industrial chemicals. The work could accelerate catalyst discovery for industries ranging from pharmaceuticals and plastics to fuels and specialty chemicals. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-chemistry-lab-catalysts-products-demand.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:50:01 EDT news701450462 Patterns reveal the individual: A novel AI algorithm equips researchers with a powerful new tool to accurately identify individual jaguars, zebras and giraffes in real time based on their unique coat patterns. Biologists and ecologists can now observe individual wild animals as they move from place to place, as well as their behavior and development over long periods, accurately, with much less effort and significantly faster than before—a major step forward for nature conservation. The scientists explain how this works in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ai-tool-wild-animals-unique.html Ecology Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:20:06 EDT news701436782 Some fish swim in synchrony. Others, it turns out, breathe in synchrony. This is true for arapaimas, an obligate air-breathing species living in the Amazon. A new study in Communications Biology, led by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence," has demonstrated for the first time that arapaima juveniles gather by the hundreds to synchronize their trips to the water surface with split-second precision, most likely to avoid predators and maximize survival and efficiency. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-amazon-fish-reveal-synchronized-survival.html Ecology Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:40:07 EDT news701426461 New instruments on the horizon promise the most precise tools yet to study and experiment on the smallest and most complex materials ever manufactured. In a paper published in the journal Nature Materials, University of Cincinnati assistant professor Hanxun Jin highlighted advances in ultrasensitive technology to measure and manipulate some of the tiniest nanomaterials used in manufacturing, aerospace, medicine and more. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-advances-materials-science-secrets-nanomaterials.html Nanomaterials Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:40:07 EDT news701425442 Tiny algae-based robots guided by magnets could improve bladder cancer treatment by boosting delivery of chemotherapy drugs into tumors, researchers say. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-algae-microbots-aim-bladder-cancer.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 22 Jun 2026 05:00:04 EDT news701090521 On a bleak stretch of the Colorado Desert in Southern California, a compact four-wheeled rover recently trundled 16 miles (26 kilometers) with minimal intervention from the team of engineers trailing it. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), this prototype is being used by NASA to advance both robotic autonomy and the ability to traverse challenging landscapes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-advanced-capabilities-moon-mars-1.html Space Exploration Sun, 21 Jun 2026 13:00:01 EDT news701074935 Bumblebees see the world differently under stress, processing visual information more sharply and making quicker decisions, new research from Newcastle University reveals. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-stress-bees-sharper-vision-faster.html Plants & Animals Sun, 21 Jun 2026 12:00:03 EDT news700831602 With the release of "Disclosure Day," Steven Spielberg's new film about aliens, a question as old as science fiction itself resurfaces: If aliens were to arrive on Earth, would they come to conquer us, to study us ... or perhaps to eat? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-aliens-earth-tomorrow.html Astrobiology Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:00:01 EDT news700914658 A biocontainment facility designed to protect Earth from potentially hazardous biotic contaminants from space should be part of a planned NASA base on the moon, a policy paper maintains. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-biocontainment-facility-moon-earth.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:20:04 EDT news701086270 A prototype four-wheel rover developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory with advanced mobility and robotic autonomy capabilities trundled across the Colorado Desert near Plaster City, California, during a field test in March 2026. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), the rover served here as a test bed for autonomy software developed for a potential lunar mission requiring higher speeds and much greater mileage than can be achieved with current planetary rovers. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-field-nasa-advanced-rover-prototype.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:20:01 EDT news701067841 Can technology really replace human relationships? As philosophy scholars who focus on human happiness and on artificial intelligence (AI), we tackle this question in a recent paper. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-people-holograms-friends-chatbots-ai.html Social Sciences Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:40:02 EDT news701007661 Flocking birds and schools of fish are a familiar sight. While previous research has uncovered the broad dynamics driving these movements, their underlying intricacies remain a mystery. Now a study by a team of New York University mathematicians offers new insights into these phenomena. It reveals that flocks and schools behave in ways similar to a soft crystalline material, with individual birds and fish serving as "atoms" that are evenly spaced in a lattice-like formation. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-flocking-birds-schools-fish-crystal.html Soft Matter Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:00:07 EDT news700932527 SpaceX shares surged again Tuesday, lifting Elon Musk's rocket company into the world's top five in market value for most of the session as a record-breaking IPO gave way to a torrid buying frenzy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sessions-spacex-world-valuable-companies.html Space Exploration Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:30:04 EDT news700888224 Even at this early stage in our spacefaring age, humanity has already begun sending probes that will eventually reach other solar systems, even if that was not their original intention. Five robotic explorers—Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons—are all on escape trajectories out of the solar system and might someday enter another one. They will no longer be operational at that point, but they serve as proof of concept that spacefaring civilizations do indeed build interstellar probes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-alien-probes-backyard-weve.html Astronomy Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:40:05 EDT news700833931