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. This year's El Niño is on track to be the strongest on record, threatening to unleash extreme weather across the globe and make 2027 the hottest recorded year by far. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-el-nio-world.html Environment Fri, 21 Aug 2026 05:10:01 EDT news706505196 AR and VR glasses once seen only in science fiction may soon be realized not as bulky stacks of lenses but as a single eyeglass-like optical element. That future is now closer to reality. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-thinner-lenses-brighter-metalens-hurdles.html Nanophysics Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:20:02 EDT news706451041 As millions of people were coming down from the excitement of the FIFA World Cup final at the start of this week, a different kind of excitement was building within the mathematical community. Levent Alpöge, a mathematician who works at the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, casually announced on X ('hello there the jacobian conjecture is false thanx') that he had found a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, a very old and well-known problem in a field of mathematics called algebraic geometry. He had done this using Anthropic's large language model Claude Fable 5, released to the general public only a few weeks ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-tiny-social-media-mathematicians-rethinking.html Mathematics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 07:40:03 EDT news703918802 A new study led by MIT researchers could drive the development of more energy-efficient digital displays—such as flat-screen TVs, augmented and virtual reality headsets, smartphone screens, medical imaging devices and even large-area ambient lighting surfaces—that also generate richer, brighter colors. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-simple-solution-lifespan-quantum-dots.html Nanophysics Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:00:06 EDT news702888058 Everyone remembers where they were when Gloria lost it. The Barbie movie's big speech—America Ferrera, voice breaking, listing every single impossible thing the world expects women to be—hit something that felt almost too real for a film about a plastic doll. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-linguistic-barbie-iconic-speech-cultural.html Social Sciences Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:20:04 EDT news702022262 Multiferroics are materials that exhibit more than one prominent "ferroic" property, such as ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. One of their most advantageous features is that they allow engineers to control their magnetic states with electric fields or vice versa, due to an effect known as magnetoelectric coupling. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-interlayer-doping-room-temperature-multiferroics.html Condensed Matter Wed, 24 Jun 2026 08:40:01 EDT news701346383 A KAIST research team has succeeded, for the first time, in synthesizing the core raw material for fabricating asymmetric MXene, a so-called "Janus-faced" nanomaterial that can perform distinct functions because of differing atomic compositions on its two sides, paving the way for the development of multifunctional materials with applications such as removing radioactive pollutants and shielding electromagnetic waves. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-janus-nanomaterials-pave-capturing-radioactive.html Nanomaterials Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:00:10 EDT news700391943 From the air, you see it only through the constant jolt, tilt, and shudder of the low-flying Cessna aircraft. The landscape of the Llanos de Moxos, northern Bolivia, appears as a disconnected patchwork of open grassland savannahs, forest islands, and lakes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-great-mysteries-archaeology-ancient-amazonian.html Social Sciences Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:00:04 EDT news700144861 What if eyes could use light to heal themselves? Drawing inspiration from how plants harness sunlight, researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) are pioneering a revolutionary treatment for dry eye disease. Their approach uses a light-activated technology derived from the photosynthetic membranes of the spinach plant, enabling the eye to stay continuously hydrated. This offers a solution that is simple, effective, and non-invasive. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-eyes-photosynthesize-scientists-dry-eye.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 18 May 2026 13:00:04 EDT news698321942 In cathedrals, such as Canterbury Cathedral in England, colorful stained glass and illustrated hagiographies tell the stories of saints through vivid visual narratives, inviting viewers into richly detailed scenes. Sometimes, this experience extends beyond sight, creating a deeper sense of immersion. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-medieval-images-triggered-soundscapes-reshaping.html Archaeology Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:20:07 EDT news696765901 Some materials behave unexpectedly. They crack differently than expected, or react in ways that are hard to explain. The answer often lies in their atomic structure. Is it neatly arranged, as in a crystal, or disordered, as in glass? Researchers at the University of Twente have now created a material that is both simultaneously. In two directions it is disordered; in the third, perfectly ordered. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-chaos-layered-material-disorder-coexist.html Nanomaterials Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:00:07 EDT news693489902 Light is an unusually rich carrier of information. Its direction of travel, wavelength, and polarization can all be used to encode signals or images. Yet controlling these properties independently remains difficult, especially when light can enter a device from either side. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-mbius-surface.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:00:06 EST news691838582 Adelaide University researchers have shown that pairing sniffer dogs with a simple air-sampling device could dramatically improve the detection of illegally trafficked wildlife hidden inside shipping containers. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-sniffer-dogs-wildlife-trafficking-shipping.html Plants & Animals Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:00:06 EST news691066264 In some solid materials under specific conditions, mutual Coulomb interactions shape electrons into many-body correlated states, such as Wigner crystals, which are essentially solids made of electrons. So far, the Wigner crystal state remains sensitive to various experimental perturbations. Uncovering their internal structure and arrangement at the atomic scale has proven more challenging. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-imaging-wigner-crystal-state-quantum.html Condensed Matter Sun, 01 Feb 2026 10:50:01 EST news688733316 Superionic water—the hot, black and strangely conductive form of ice that exists in the center of distant planets—was predicted in the 1980s and first recreated in a laboratory in 2018. With each closer look, it continues to surprise researchers. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-simultaneous-superionic-ice-giant-magnetic.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:50:03 EST news687105907 Right now, the debate about consciousness often feels frozen between two entrenched positions. On one side sits computational functionalism, which treats cognition as something you can fully explain in terms of abstract information processing: get the right functional organization (regardless of the material it runs on) and you get consciousness. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-path-consciousness-biological.html Other Mon, 22 Dec 2025 13:20:04 EST news685631750 For people living near volcanoes, danger goes well beyond lava flows and clouds of ash. Some explosive eruptions can lead to dramatic collapses of the sides of a volcano, like those at Mount St. Helens, Washington, and Anak Krakatau, Indonesia. The latter triggered tsunamis blamed for most deaths from its historic eruptions in 1883. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-tool-volcano-slope-collapses-tsunamis.html Earth Sciences Fri, 03 Oct 2025 12:37:05 EDT news678713822 Whether space-time exists should be neither controversial nor even conceptually challenging, given the definitions of "space-time," "events" and "instants." The idea that space-time exists is no more viable than the outdated belief that the celestial sphere exists: both are observer-centered models that are powerful and convenient for describing the world, but neither represents reality itself. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-space-doesnt-framework-reality.html General Physics Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:40:02 EDT news677945634 Rice University researchers used a focused electron beam to pattern device functions with submicron precision directly into an ultrathin crystal. The approach produced traces narrower than the width of a DNA helix that glow with bright blue light and conduct electricity, showing it could be used to manufacture compact on-chip wiring and built-in light sources. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-scientists-electrons-pattern-sources-wiring.html Nanophysics Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:33:40 EDT news677939615 At a humming factory in the Spanish town of O Carballino, workers sling dozens of limp octopuses into a metal cauldron, wincing as strings of slime splatter their aprons. Nearby, others slice tentacles and pack them into vacuum-sealed bags destined for restaurants and retailers across Europe, Asia and the United States—part of a growing global appetite for an animal that's become increasingly scarce in its native waters. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-octopuses-dwindle-spanish-suppliers-imports.html Ecology Wed, 13 Aug 2025 03:30:19 EDT news674274603 Sliding ferroelectrics are a type of two-dimensional (2D) material realized by stacking nonpolar monolayers (atom-thick layers that lack an electric dipole). When these individual layers are stacked, they produce ferroelectric materials with an intrinsic polarization (i.e., in which positive and negative charges are spontaneously separated), which can be switched using an external electric field that is perpendicular to them. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-domain-walls-polarization-ferroelectrics.html Nanophysics Mon, 11 Aug 2025 13:10:01 EDT news674133369 As a mild-mannered statistics professor, it's not often that I get contacted directly by the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company, much less regarding allegations of cheating and malfeasance among world champions. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-im-statistics-professor-embroiled-world.html Mathematics Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:28:28 EDT news671286502 Solving life's great mysteries often requires detective work, using observed outcomes to determine their cause. For instance, nuclear physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility analyze the aftermath of particle interactions to understand the structure of the atomic nucleus. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-elementary-problem-ai-approach-tackles.html General Physics Wed, 25 Jun 2025 12:50:01 EDT news670074094 A new platform for engineering chiral electron pathways offers potential fresh insights into a quantum phenomenon discovered by chemists—and exemplifies how the second quantum revolution is fostering transdisciplinary collaborations that bridge physics, chemistry, and biology to tackle fundamental questions. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-quantum-spirals-programmable-platform-ways.html Condensed Matter Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:00:03 EDT news668940541 Sixty-five miles southwest of Chicago, a small hill that looks like a prop from an Indiana Jones movie breaks up the flat, monotone landscape. Consisting of shale, sandstone and rocks from an old coal mine, the waste pile—located on a massive river delta from another era—is an unremarkable remnant from the region's once-thriving coal industry. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-world-fossils-chicago-dinosaur-bones.html Paleontology & Fossils Tue, 27 May 2025 10:50:04 EDT news667561573 Most people think of crocodilians as living fossils—stubbornly unchanged, prehistoric relics that have ruled the world's swampiest corners for millions of years. But their evolutionary history tells a different story, according to new research led by the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) and the University of Utah. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-ancestors-today-crocodilians-survived-mass.html Evolution Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:04 EDT news663940514 Extreme weather is dangerous weather, and that's particularly true for the heavy rainfall events that experts say are becoming more frequent with climate change. The powerful storms can pose threats ranging from falling limbs to downed power lines to drowning. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-heavy-rainfall-threatens.html Environment Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:52:30 EDT news662914345 It's a milestone that leaves parents beaming with pride: the first time their child shakily writes out their own name. And it's the start of many more key childhood moments, from Christmas lists to writing their own stories. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-playground-jigsaw-puzzles-ways-children.html Education Wed, 02 Apr 2025 12:18:04 EDT news662815082 With artificial photosynthesis, mankind could utilize solar energy to bind carbon dioxide and produce hydrogen. Chemists from Würzburg and Seoul have taken this one step further: They have synthesized a stack of dyes that comes very close to the photosynthetic apparatus of plants. It absorbs light energy, uses it to separate charge carriers and transfers them quickly and efficiently in the stack. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-artificial-photosynthesis-chemists-dye-stack.html Biochemistry Fri, 14 Mar 2025 06:00:03 EDT news661066921 When spiders spin their webs, they use their hind legs to pull silk threads from their spinnerets. This pulling action doesn't just help the spider release the silk, it's also a crucial step in strengthening the silk fibers for a more durable web. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-spider-silk-stronger-aligning-protein.html Analytical Chemistry Fri, 07 Mar 2025 14:00:07 EST news660500402