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. Under the leadership of the University of Bonn, a research team led by Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics has discovered that galaxy clusters are about twice as heavy as previously assumed. The additional mass comes mainly from neutron stars and stellar black holes and also explains the observed quantities of heavy elements. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-stellar-remnants-mystery-mass-galaxy.html Astronomy Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:00:04 EST news689860535 As artificial intelligence advances, computers demand faster and more efficient memory. The key to ultra-high-speed, low-power semiconductors lies in the "switching" principle—the mechanism by which memory materials turn electricity on and off. A South Korean research team has successfully captured the elusive moment of switching and its internal operational principles by momentarily melting and freezing materials within nano-devices—phenomena that were previously difficult to observe. The study provides a foundational blueprint for designing next-generation memory materials that are faster and consume less power based on fundamental principles. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-capturing-instant-electrical-pave-faster.html Nanophysics Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:25:44 EST news689865901 Fresh, affordable and nutritious food is an essential human need. But for many city-dwellers, accessing it can be difficult and time-consuming, especially for those who are elderly or have mobility challenges. This is true even in Montreal, a city that prides itself on its active transportation network and compact population distribution. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-fresh-healthy-food-difficult-montrealers.html Environment Sat, 07 Feb 2026 08:30:02 EST news689342016 Time crystals, a collection of particles that "tick"—or move back and forth in repeating cycles—were first theorized and then discovered about a decade ago. While scientists have yet to create commercial or industrial applications for this intriguing form of matter, these crystals hold great promise for advancing quantum computing and data storage, among other uses. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-scientists-levitating-crystals.html General Physics Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:29:24 EST news689603342 EPFL physicists have found a way to measure the time involved in quantum events and found it depends on the symmetry of the material. "The concept of time has troubled philosophers and physicists for thousands of years, and the advent of quantum mechanics has not simplified the problem," says Professor Hugo Dil, a physicist at EPFL. "The central problem is the general role of time in quantum mechanics, and especially the timescale associated with a quantum transition." https://phys.org/news/2026-02-quantum-material-symmetry.html Quantum Physics Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:00:03 EST news689529541 Rising day and night temperatures are threatening rice, wheat, and maize production by disrupting plant growth, grain filling, and grain quality, putting global food security at risk. Precision breeding and genome editing offer ways to reprogram plant clocks, optimize flowering and panicle architecture, and protect grain quality under heat stress. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-tolerant-high-yield-rice-planet.html Biotechnology Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:58:01 EST news689594222 When startups scale quickly, founders often make hurried hiring decisions that unintentionally disadvantage women, according to new study from the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden. The study shows how the pressures of rapid growth increase the likelihood that founders rely on mental shortcuts and make biased decisions. The study is published in the journal Human Resource Management. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-large-scaling-startups-gender-gaps.html Economics & Business Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:20:03 EST news689520238 Parents often tell their children to sound out the words as they are learning to read. It makes sense: Since they already know how to speak, the sound of a word might serve as a clue to its meaning. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-numbing-mouth-silent.html Education Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:40:07 EST news689518480 How are superconductivity and magnetism connected? A puzzling relation between magnetism and superconductivity in a quantum material has lingered for decades—now, a study from TU Wien offers a surprising new explanation. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-superconductivity-exposes-altermagnetism-symmetries.html Condensed Matter Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:13:39 EST news689332382 Time-dependent driving has become a powerful tool for creating novel nonequilibrium phases such as discrete time crystals and Floquet topological phases, which do not exist in static systems. Breaking continuous time-translation symmetry typically leads to the outcome that driven quantum systems absorb energy and eventually heat up toward a featureless infinite-temperature state, where coherent structure is lost. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-random-qubit-processor-reveals-prethermal.html Quantum Physics Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:46:55 EST news688988786 Living organisms are made up of hundreds of thousands of cells that cooperate to create the organs and systems that breathe, eat, move, and think. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a new way to track how and when cells touch each other to work together in these ways. In a study published in January in Cell Reports Methods, researchers from The University of Osaka reported the development of fluorescent markers for monitoring cell communication under a microscope. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-real-imaging-captures-contact-cells.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:27:30 EST news688922821 For those who watch gravitational waves roll in from the universe, GW250114 is a big one. It's the clearest gravitational wave signal from a binary black hole merger to date, and it gives researchers an opportunity to test Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, known as general relativity. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-gravitational-einstein-theory-general.html General Physics Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:26:45 EST news688911961 Using ESA's Gaia satellite, astronomers have investigated three open clusters in the galactic disk, namely Berkeley 17, 18 and 39. Results of the new study, published January 21 on the arXiv pre-print server, yield crucial insights into the properties of these stellar groupings. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-gaia-reveal-galactic-clusters.html Astronomy Thu, 29 Jan 2026 08:00:01 EST news688882526 SpaceX is targeting a mid-June initial public offering that would coincide with a rare planetary alignment and founder Elon Musk's birthday, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, as the billionaire entrepreneur seeks to raise a record $50 billion. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-spacex-eyes-ipo-planet-alignment.html Space Exploration Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:02:42 EST news688838521 For the first time, researchers have directly visualized how newly formed cellular organelles leave the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and transition onto microtubule tracks inside living cells. This new finding reveals that the ER plays an active and dynamic role in steering intracellular traffic rather than serving as a passive factory. The study is published in the journal ACS Nano. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-capturing-moment-organelle-handoff-cells.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:23:17 EST news688828982 Almost a hundred new animal species that survived a mass extinction event half a billion years ago have been discovered in a small quarry in China, scientists revealed Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-rare-fossils-reveal-species-survived.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:10:06 EST news688827978 Nuclear propulsion and power technologies could unlock new frontiers in missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. NASA has reached an important milestone advancing nuclear propulsion that could benefit future deep space missions by completing a cold-flow test campaign of the first flight reactor engineering development unit since the 1960s. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-nasa-advances-space-nuclear-propulsion.html Space Exploration Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:41:29 EST news688812061 An international team of researchers including scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) have developed a way to reveal the smallest of malfunctions in the biochemical machinery that makes proteins in our bodies. According to the researchers, these malfunctions, however small, can trigger neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, as well as cancer and developmental disorders. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-scientists-technique-malfunctions-genetic-code.html Biotechnology Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:40:01 EST news688734510 A new tool developed by Washington State University researchers could someday provide daily or weekly forecasts of water availability in the mountains similar to a weather forecast that agencies could use for important water management decisions. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-mountain-tool-aims-refine-availability.html Environment Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:10:43 EST news688752601 Astronomers have captured the first radio waves ever detected from a rare class of exploding star, a discovery that has given them an unprecedented look into the final years of a massive star before its death in a powerful stellar explosion called a supernova. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-radio-rare-supernova-reveal-star.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:43:37 EST news688740181 The search for better oxygen carriers has long centered on one key question: how can we design metal oxides that can reversibly store and release lattice oxygen efficiently at lower temperatures? This reversible behavior underpins clean-energy technologies such as fuel conversion, CO2 capture, and chemical looping for hydrogen production, where reaction feasibility and efficiency depend directly on a material's oxygen storage and release capacity (OSC). https://phys.org/news/2026-01-qa-uncovering-temperature-oxygen-storage.html Materials Science Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:30:01 EST news688656421 Biological processes that govern our lives are many, intertwined, and often difficult to understand. They involve countless interactions happening at once—molecules recognizing each other, signals being transmitted, and matter being transported with precise timing—making the underlying physical rules complex and hard to disentangle. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-glassy-dynamics-lipid-exchange-cell.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:12:24 EST news688396322 The retirement of West Midlands police chief Craig Guildford is a wake-up call for those of us using artificial intelligence (AI) tools at work and in our personal lives. Guildford lost the confidence of the home secretary after it was revealed that the force used incorrect AI-generated evidence in their controversial decision to ban Israeli football fans from attending a match. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-ai-ability-reclaim-brain.html Social Sciences Fri, 23 Jan 2026 10:15:37 EST news688385701 Space debris—the thousands of pieces of human-made objects abandoned in Earth's orbit—pose a risk to humans when they fall to the ground. To locate possible crash sites, a Johns Hopkins University scientist has helped to devise a way to track falling debris using existing networks of earthquake-detecting seismometers. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-seismometer-networks-track-space-junk.html Space Exploration Thu, 22 Jan 2026 14:00:09 EST news688303703 The asteroid that struck the Earth 66 million years ago devastated life across the planet, wiping out the dinosaurs and other organisms in a hail of fire and catastrophic climate change. But new research shows that it also set the stage for life to rebound astonishingly quickly. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-evidence-lightning-fast-evolution-chicxulub.html Earth Sciences Thu, 22 Jan 2026 01:51:28 EST news688269051 Researchers at Tohoku University have developed a new technique to identify the initiation sites of a destructive process called pitting corrosion, which occurs when aluminum (Al) alloys are exposed to sodium chloride solutions. This advancement is expected to accelerate the development of Al alloys with improved corrosion resistance. Since Al alloys are widely used in transportation equipment, improving corrosion resistance means we can develop more durable automotive engines, suspensions, and transmissions. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-corrosion-sites-aluminum-alloys.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:36:21 EST news688235762 For decades, the ability to visualize the chemical composition of materials, whether for diagnosing a disease, assessing food quality, or analyzing pollution, depended on large, expensive laboratory instruments called spectrometers. These devices work by taking light, spreading it out into a rainbow using a prism or grating, and measuring the intensity of each color. The problem is that spreading light requires a long physical path, making the device inherently bulky. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-ai-driven-ultrafast-spectrometer-chip.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:40:02 EST news688142668 At the Department of Ion Physics and Applied Physics at the University of Innsbruck, a research team has succeeded for the first time in storing electrically charged helium nanodroplets in an ion trap for up to one minute. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-ion-enables-minute-nanocosmos.html Nanophysics Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:55:19 EST news688121701 More efficient and sustainable energy conversion technologies, among other applications, hinge on lowering the amount of energy needed to trigger specific reactions on the surface of electrodes. Called electrocatalysis, the process conserves energy by transferring electrons and speeding up the reaction time, but the molecules involved typically cannot shuttle other particles or directly activate components of the system. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-molecular-strategy-efficiency-electrocatalytic-reactions.html Analytical Chemistry Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:30:01 EST news687626570 The Menga dolmen in Antequera, Spain, is a Neolithic monument and part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The monument, built in the fourth millennium BCE, has seen continued use for burials and rituals through the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Antiquity, and medieval times. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-medieval-burials-menga-dolmen-multicultural.html Archaeology Wed, 14 Jan 2026 13:00:03 EST news687615124