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. The Kronshtadskiy subglacial lake near East Antarctica's Amery Ice Shelf was hidden beneath Antarctica's ice, but its drainage left a mark visible from space as a broad depression that deepened by more than 6 meters (20 feet) at its center. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-antarctic-ice-reveals-hidden-lake.html Earth Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 10:00:07 EDT news711808123 El Niño is part of a natural climate pattern that occurs roughly every two to seven years, bringing warmer-than-normal water to parts of the equatorial Pacific. The most recent very strong El Niño events, in 1997–98 and 2015–16, upended weather patterns. Impacts spanned the planet, from fires in Indonesia and the Amazon to crop failures due to drought in southern Africa to heavy rain and coastal flooding in Southern California. The current El Niño rivals these past heavyweights. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-el-nio-1.html Earth Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:40:02 EDT news711963762 Red crown rot, a fungal disease of soybean, is not new to the Midwest. First reported in Illinois in 2018, the disease is now surging across the state and the region. Boris Camiletti, a plant pathologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is leading the effort to understand and combat the scourge, along with the Crop Protection Network, the Illinois Soybean Association, the United Soybean Board and researchers in surrounding states. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-red-crown-expert-emerging-soybean.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 23 Oct 2026 07:10:04 EDT news711948045 Private companies are getting better at launching more mass into space with larger rockets. But there is still a major constraint on the size of objects we can get into orbit—fairing size. This places physical constraints on the overall shape of what we can launch and severely limits the sizes of, say, a communications array or a power satellite. But a new paper from researchers at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Beijing Institute of Technology offers a solution—a self-shaping, deployable module that can fine-tune both its positioning and its own dimensions. The findings are published in the journal Space: Science & Technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-autonomous-triangular-modules-tomorrow-mega.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 20:40:01 EDT news711905701 A University of Cambridge–led analysis of maps made from satellite imagery covering over three decades and seven presidents shows how the winner of Brazil's national elections since 1990 directly affected the preservation of its globally vital ecosystems. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-brazil-presidential-elections-linked-decades.html Environment Thu, 22 Oct 2026 18:20:07 EDT news711886197 As the climate gets warmer, the number of particles that make up clouds in the Arctic may increase or decrease, depending on the specific area. A new study indicates that the Arctic should be divided into three parts rather than considered as a whole. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-years-size-view-arctic-cloud.html Earth Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:20:18 EDT news711900301 In this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope, we visit a turbulent cauldron of star formation to see what is brewing inside dense clumps of gas. This is a star-forming region named LHA 120-N 159, or simply N159, located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. This image spans about 230 light-years across. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-webb-image-reveals-young-stars.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:40:01 EDT news711892283 Technion researchers have presented evidence for the existence of solar-storm-like outbursts near supermassive black holes, which can be a million times larger than the sun or more. The phenomenon was discovered in the vicinity of the black hole in the galaxy NGC 3783, and the researchers' findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-black-hole-uncover-evidence-solar.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:03:31 EDT news711885705 An international team of scientists from the University of Sheffield and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, led by a postdoctoral research fellow from the University of Newcastle, Australia, has discovered that solar jets called spicules, which are 6–8 Mm long, take the form of warped, denser plasma sheets like pleated drapery. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-curtain-plasma-solar-jets-apparent.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:20:06 EDT news711877531 Giant manta rays can grow up to nine meters (30 feet) long with a disk size of seven meters (23 feet) across and weigh up to 2,000 kg (4,400 pounds). This size leaves them with very few natural enemies once they reach adulthood at around eight to 10 years old. But giant manta ray babies, called pups, cannot rely on their size to protect them from predators that live in the open ocean, including several species of shark and orcas. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-baby-manta-rays-hunker-coasts.html Plants & Animals Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:01 EDT news711799141 A patrol boat off the coast of Gabon intercepted three trawlers in July 2026, inside the Grand Sud Reserve. This is one of West and Central Africa's largest marine reserves, where industrial trawling is banned. None of the trawlers held a valid license. The patrol found them because analysts at the nonprofit Global Fishing Watch had studied satellite data and worked out where to look. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-illegal-fishing-african-satellite.html Ecology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 22:40:07 EDT news711797621 SpaceX reported a bigger quarterly profit than expected Tuesday as its satellite communications operations and its business of leasing computing power to other companies boomed. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-spacex-profit-losses-satellite-leasing.html Space Exploration Wed, 21 Oct 2026 04:48:15 EDT news711776874 Volunteer researcher Chris Hopper, JCU's adjunct professor Eric Wolanski and independent researcher Natalie K. Dowling examined the impact of saltwater and erosion on Horseshoe Bay Lagoon, a freshwater lagoon and one of the few swamps with bulkuru sedge—also known as water chestnut—on the Magnetic Island (Yunbenun). The study is published in the journal Applied Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-major-horseshoe-bay-lagoon.html Ecology Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:20:01 EDT news711719671 Global rainfall maps are built from observations collected by multiple satellites, but they have an important limitation. The satellites that provide these measurements cannot see the whole Earth at once. As a result, some regions of these maps can have no valid observations. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gaps-global-rainfall.html Earth Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:30:01 EDT news711727741 Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars, the extremely dense cores left behind when massive stars explode. Astrophysicists have recently observed a pulsar rotating over 300 times per second that appeared to be slowing down unusually quickly. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-pulsar-apparent-slowdown-reveals-rare.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:20:10 EDT news711713533 Scientists at Columbia University and Imperial College London have found that the largest canyon system in the solar system is still active and shaping Mars today, billions of years after it first formed. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-giant-canyon-mars-tectonically-today.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:20:36 EDT news711705481 On Oct. 16, 2021, NASA's Lucy spacecraft began its journey to the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids with an early morning launch. Now less than a year away from the first-ever close-up of a Trojan, the Southwest Research Institute–led mission has already made several findings during its first five years. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-lucy-mission-years-discoveries.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:00:07 EDT news711691156 Indonesian authorities were investigating Tuesday after a car-sized piece of debris, possibly from a Chinese rocket according to a government agency, crashed into a palm oil plantation near homes and work sites. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-indonesia-probes-chinese-rocket-fragment.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:46:08 EDT news711693934 The aurora is among nature's most visually striking phenomena. It occurs when charged particles from the sun are funneled by Earth's magnetic field into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with atoms and molecules and produce distinctly colored curtainlike patterns of light. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-auroral-electrons.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:40:01 EDT news711628203 Indonesian wildfires that have caused a regional haze crisis burned more than 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres) in the first nine months of 2026, a monitor analyzing satellite data said on Monday. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-indonesia-million-hectares.html Environment Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:29:48 EDT news711620909 Groundwater in many areas of the U.S. and across the globe is being depleted as pumping for drinking water and agriculture outpaces nature's ability to refill aquifers. In the most severe cases, this could lead to a point of no return, where an aquifer's physical structure collapses and it cannot be refilled. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-advance-aquifer-remote-statistical-groundwater.html Earth Sciences Mon, 19 Oct 2026 07:00:02 EDT news711603436 A Japanese space mission is about to launch towards Mars. But it will not land on the planet itself. Instead, the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission will focus on Phobos, the bigger of Mars's two small moons. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-japan-mmx-mission-aims-swipe.html Space Exploration Sun, 18 Oct 2026 10:00:01 EDT news711356214 Most natural gas leakage in Indianapolis likely originates from homes and other buildings, not exterior pipelines and large-scale distribution infrastructure that deliver the fossil fuel, according to Penn State researchers who assessed nearly a decade of data. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-natural-gas-midwest-city-leaks.html Earth Sciences Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:30:02 EDT news711377822 Most studies of how clouds are responding to climate change focus on clouds over the oceans, rather than over mountains. Those that do focus on mountain clouds tend to explore cloud microphysics rather than long-term trends in cloud phase. But understanding cloud behavior over regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, which supplies water to hundreds of millions of people, is critical—especially as diminishing snowpack and altered precipitation patterns threaten this critical water source. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-supercooled-clouds-highest-mountains-differently.html Earth Sciences Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:10:01 EDT news711376981 This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove. Hubble captured the image as part of a survey looking at 260 satellite galaxies around 22 Milky Way–like host galaxies within a radius of about 32 million light-years from Earth. Hubble has already observed 111 of these satellite galaxies. The remaining galaxies will take an additional 149 Hubble orbits, one orbit for each galaxy, to observe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-hubble-spies-spiral-edge.html Astronomy Fri, 16 Oct 2026 13:40:08 EDT news711366863 A phenomenon rarer than a solar eclipse and more powerful than any single storm system is unfolding this fall, and NASA is tracking it closely. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-satellites-historic-el-nio.html Earth Sciences Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:44:08 EDT news711373385 On May 10, 2025, a spacecraft built in the Soviet Union to land on Venus came home. Launched in 1972, Cosmos-482 was stranded by a failed upper stage of its rocket and circled Earth for 53 years. In its last days, several space agencies and research groups forecasted when it would fall, and therefore where. Roscosmos later reported that it came down in the Indian Ocean, west of Jakarta. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-air-deep-uncontrolled-satellites-rocket.html Space Exploration Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:40:12 EDT news711280994 When a marine heat wave strikes, scientists often turn to satellites to see how the ocean is responding. From space, changes in ocean color can reveal shifts in phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that form the foundation of marine food webs and play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. But satellites have a fundamental limitation: they can only see the ocean's surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-north-sea-fueled-underwater-plankton.html Earth Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:00:07 EDT news711292632 The Earth got its moon when a small planet collided with our planet more than 4 billion years ago. This impact hurled molten rock into space, which eventually coalesced to form the satellite we can see every night from across our planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mars-moons-japan-mmx-space.html Space Exploration Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:40:05 EDT news711282372 A new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) provides the most comprehensive observational analysis yet of the towering ice cliffs that fringe Earth's ice sheets, giving scientists new evidence to evaluate a long-debated process that could influence future sea level rise. Improving these projections is increasingly important as rising seas threaten coastal communities and infrastructure worldwide. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-global-ice-cliff-survey-disputed.html Earth Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:00:20 EDT news711201735