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. Gemini North captured new images of Comet 3I/ATLAS after it reemerged from behind the sun on its path out of the solar system. The data were collected during a Shadow the Scientists session—a unique outreach initiative that invites students around the world to join researchers as they observe the universe on the world's most advanced telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-gemini-north-images-reveal-greenish.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:13:40 EST news684771143 For decades, astronomers have searched for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence using radio telescopes and optical instruments, scanning the skies for artificial signals. Now, researchers are taking a different approach, this time looking much closer to home for alien artifacts that might already be in our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-scientists-earth-shadow-alien-probes.html Astronomy Wed, 13 Aug 2025 10:08:11 EDT news674298489 It would be difficult to understand the inner workings of a complex machine without ever opening it up, but this is the challenge scientists face when exploring quantum systems. Traditional methods of looking into these systems often require immense resources, making them impractical for large-scale applications. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-shallow-shadows-uncover-quantum-properties.html Quantum Physics Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:00:01 EDT news665070656 Can light itself cast a shadow? It may sound like a philosophical riddle, but researchers have found that under certain conditions, a laser beam can act like an opaque object and cast a shadow. The discovery challenges the traditional understanding of shadows and opens new possibilities for technologies that could use a laser beam to control another laser beam. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-scientists-laser-shadow.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 14 Nov 2024 08:48:04 EST news650796481 The Perseverance rover lurks in the quiet, cold, desolate landscape of Jezero crater on Mars, a place masked in shadows and haunted by past mysteries. Built to endure the planet's harsh conditions, Perseverance braves the thin atmosphere and extreme temperature swings. Its microphone captures the eerie whispers of martian winds, sending shivers down your spine, and records ghostly dust devils swirling across the barren terrain. Has the microphone caught the sound of a skeleton rattling its bones? We'll leave that up to your imagination. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-martian-landscape-spooky-soliday.html Space Exploration Wed, 30 Oct 2024 15:56:06 EDT news649522563 Get ready for a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon, all rolled into one. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-partial-lunar-eclipse-september-supermoon.html Space Exploration Sun, 15 Sep 2024 04:32:14 EDT news645593527 Solstices mark the changing of seasons, occur twice a year, and feature the year's shortest and longest daylight hours—depending on your hemisphere. These extremes in the length of day and night make solstice days more noticeable to many observers than the subtle equality of day and night experienced during equinoxes. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-tropical-solstice-shadows.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:32:18 EDT news637936336 A total solar eclipse swept across North America yesterday, blocking out the sun momentarily with parts of the continent plunged into darkness. Geostationary satellites orbiting 36,000 km away captured images of the rare celestial event. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-video-total-solar-eclipse-space.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 09 Apr 2024 14:59:26 EDT news631893564 The diverse forms of private tutoring range from one-to-one sessions to large lecture halls with video screens. Parents and students seek this supplement to gain a competitive edge in countries where academic achievement is seen as a pathway to future opportunities. However, concerns regarding the commercialization of education, unequal access based on socioeconomic status, and increased academic pressure on students have made shadow education contentious. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-exploring-landscape-shadow.html Social Sciences Tue, 05 Mar 2024 16:07:46 EST news628877261 Plasmonics are special optical phenomena that are understood as interactions between light and matter and possess diverse shapes, material compositions, and symmetry-related behavior. The design of such plasmonic structures at the nanoscale level can pave the way for optical materials that respond to the orientation of light (polarization), which is not easily achievable in bulk size and existing materials. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-showcase-breakthroughs-potential-plasmonics.html Nanophysics Tue, 30 Jan 2024 14:49:45 EST news625848582 For decades, scientists have used satellite data to assess the health and greenness of Earth's vegetation. These data have influenced our understanding and decision-making on pressing issues from sustainable crop production to climate change. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-shadows-greenness-uncovering-satellite-biases.html Ecology Tue, 09 Jan 2024 10:15:04 EST news624017702 Most of the moon's permanently shadowed areas arose less than 2.2 billion years ago and some trapped ice during the recent past, according to research led by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Norbert Schorghofer. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-highlights-young-age-permanently-shadowed.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 13 Sep 2023 15:55:04 EDT news613839302 Astronomers from the University of Warwick reveal a new phenomenon dubbed the "rocking shadow" effect that describes how disks in forming planetary systems are oriented, and how they move around their host star. The effect also gives clues as to how they might evolve with time. Dr. Rebecca Nealon presented the new work this week at the 2022 National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Warwick. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-shadows-protoplanetary-disks.html Astronomy Fri, 15 Jul 2022 13:19:07 EDT news577109770 Solutions to a 55-year-old problem in boiling water reactors—which represent a third of nuclear power reactors in the United States—are on the way now that the problem has been emulated with ion beams. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-nuclear-shadow-corrosion-lab-paving.html General Physics Mon, 20 Dec 2021 12:31:19 EST news559225868 The longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years, which will bathe the Moon in red, was visible for a big slice of humanity on Friday. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-moon-partial-lunar-eclipse-longest.html Space Exploration Thu, 18 Nov 2021 16:29:18 EST news556475356 You can see the longest partial lunar eclipse in hundreds of years this week. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-longest-lunar-eclipse-centuries-week.html Space Exploration Tue, 16 Nov 2021 12:57:26 EST news556289841 Recent findings, with important implications for ocean biogeochemistry and climate science, have been published by Nature Communications in a paper by Associate Professor Mark Holzer from UNSW Science's School of Mathematics & Statistics, with co-authors Tim DeVries (UCSB) and Casimir de Lavergne (LOCEAN). https://phys.org/news/2021-07-scientists-bottom-deep-pacific-ventilation.html Earth Sciences Fri, 16 Jul 2021 12:49:17 EDT news545658554 Hidden pockets of water could be much more common on the surface of the moon than scientists once suspected, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder. In some cases, these tiny patches of ice might exist in permanent shadows no bigger than a penny. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-tiny-moon-shadows-harbor-hidden.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:00:05 EDT news522916425 Is there life outside our planet? https://phys.org/news/2020-10-trees-multicellular-life-exoplanets.html Astronomy Fri, 02 Oct 2020 09:35:09 EDT news520850106 Sometimes nicknames turn out to be closer to reality than you might imagine. https://phys.org/news/2020-06-hubble-cosmic-shadow.html Astronomy Thu, 25 Jun 2020 10:27:42 EDT news512299619 RUDN astrophysicists have proposed a new method for approximate calculation of the parameters of spherically symmetric black holes in the Einstein-Maxwell theory. By comparing the shadow radii of the black holes obtained via this method with exact numerical solutions, astrophysicists have revealed that the approximation they suggested shows a reasonable accuracy in the second order. This means that it is possible to study the black holes themselves and the phenomena in their vicinity, for example, particle motion. The article is published in the journal Physical Review D. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-astrophysicists-approximations-metric-spherically-symmetric.html Astronomy Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:53:00 EST news499513977 NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter has successfully executed a 10.5-hour propulsive maneuver—extraordinarily long by mission standards. The goal of the burn, as its known, will keep the solar-powered spacecraft out of what would have been a mission-ending shadow cast by Jupiter on the spacecraft during its next close flyby of the planet on Nov. 3, 2019. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-nasa-juno-jupiter-shadow.html Space Exploration Thu, 03 Oct 2019 09:28:09 EDT news489313685 A RUDN University physicist has developed a formula for evaluation of the effect of dark matter on the size of the shadow of a black hole. It turned out that the effect would be noticeable only if the concentration of this hypothetical form of matter around black holes in the centers of galaxies is abnormally high. If it is not the case, then it is unlikely that dark matter could be detected using the shadow of a black hole. The work was published in the journal Physics Letters B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High Energy Physics. https://phys.org/news/2019-09-physicist-effect-dark-shadow-black.html General Physics Wed, 18 Sep 2019 09:27:32 EDT news488017647 In this image by the international Cassini spacecraft, Saturn's shadow is captured creeping across the rings. The bottom half of the image shows the bright rings reflecting sunlight from their icy particles, whereas the top is partially obscured in shadow from the gas giant. https://phys.org/news/2019-09-image-night-day-saturn.html Space Exploration Mon, 02 Sep 2019 07:59:17 EDT news486629954 Tuesday, 16 July, will see a partial eclipse of the moon, visible in the U.K. after sunset. The eclipse, 50 years to the day after the launch of Apollo 11, will also be seen across a large part of Asia, the whole of Africa, the eastern part of South America, and the western part of Australia. https://phys.org/news/2019-07-partial-lunar-eclipse-grace-uk.html Space Exploration Tue, 16 Jul 2019 08:07:32 EDT news482483245 Between 1969 and 1972, a new type of archaeological site was created. For the first time, human bodies and the technology needed to sustain them altered the landscape of another world. The astronauts from the six Apollo missions left a suite of space-age artefacts behind on the lunar surface. And not only that: the missions brought to the moon new kinds of shadows, cast by machines and bodies and flags and rovers, in an interplay of movement and stillness. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-shadows-moon-tale-ephemeral.html Space Exploration Fri, 29 Mar 2019 08:40:02 EDT news473064539 Saturn is famous for its bright, glorious rings but in this picture, taken during Saturn's 2009 equinox, the rings are cast in a different light as sunlight hits the rings edge-on. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-image-saturn-equinox.html Space Exploration Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:00:02 EDT news472212444 This month's rare total eclipse will be the last one visible from the United States until 2022. https://phys.org/news/2019-01-january-total-lunar-eclipse.html Space Exploration Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:17:52 EST news466334266 Shadows on Earth can be mysterious and foreboding, but when they occur in space, they can convey information we otherwise could not know. In a stellar nursery called the Serpens Nebula, nearly 1,300 light-years away, a young star's game of shadow play is revealing secrets of its unseen planet-forming disk. The near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured the shadow cast by the fledgling star's brilliant light being blocked by this disk. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-hubble-reveals-giant-cosmic-shadow.html Astronomy Wed, 31 Oct 2018 13:39:16 EDT news460211933 The longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century is coming up, and you don't want to miss it. https://phys.org/news/2018-07-longest-lunar-eclipse-21st-century.html Space Exploration Thu, 26 Jul 2018 19:00:01 EDT news451836027