Black hole debate settled? Stellar-mass black holes found at heart of Milky Way's largest star cluster

Could a decades-long debate about the mysterious movements of stars in Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way, finally be resolved? | Continue reading


@phys.org | 2 days ago

Judging knot strength throws people for a loop: Experiment reveals new blind spot in our physical reasoning

We tie our shoes, we put on neckties, we wrestle with power cords. Yet despite deep familiarity with knots, most people cannot tell a weak knot from a strong one by looking at them, new Johns Hopkins University research finds. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 2 days ago

'Easy, convenient, cheap': How single-use plastic rules the world

Each year the world produces around 400 million tonnes of plastic waste, much of it discarded after just a few minutes of use. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 16 days ago

Plastics: lifesaver turned environmental threat

Before it threatened biodiversity, the oceans and the global food chain, plastics saved lives and transformed societies as a durable, malleable and cheap material. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 16 days ago

Earth bids farewell to its temporary 'mini moon' that is possibly a chunk of our actual moon

Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that's been tagging along as a "mini moon" for the past two months. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 16 days ago

As baboons become bolder, Cape Town battles for solutions

On a sunny afternoon in Cape Town's seaside village of Simon's Town, three young chacma baboons cause a commotion, clambering on roofs, jumping between buildings and swinging on the gutters. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 16 days ago

Petrol industry embraces plastics while navigating energy shift

Amid the inexorable shift toward more electric vehicles, oil and gas producers are looking increasingly to plastics to help keep them afloat, even if that sector faces challenges of its own. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 16 days ago

'Existential challenge': plastic pollution treaty talks begin

A final round of talks on a treaty to curb plastic pollution opened on Monday, with deep differences between nations emerging almost immediately. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 16 days ago

Genetic evidence points to distinct Viking settlers of the Faroe Islands and Iceland

Geneticists have studied the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups on the Faroe Islands, known to have been colonized by Vikings around the year 900 CE, and compared these to distributions of haplogroups in today's Scandinavia. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Wildlife monitoring technologies used to intimidate and spy on women, study finds

Remotely operated camera traps, sound recorders and drones are increasingly being used in conservation science to monitor wildlife and natural habitats, and to keep watch on protected natural areas. But Cambridge researchers studying a forest in northern India have found that the … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Man scouring Google Earth found a mysterious scar in the Australian outback. Now we know what caused it

Earlier this year, a caver was poring over satellite images of the Nullarbor Plain when he came across something unexpected: an enormous, mysterious scar etched into the barren landscape. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Chimps are upping their tool game, says study

"Planet of the Apes" may have been onto something. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Slender-billed Curlew may be extinct, marking the disappearance of a third bird species from the Western Palaearctic

A small team of conservationists, biodiversity specialists and bird researchers has found that it is likely a third species of bird has gone extinct in the Western Palaearctic—a large area of land spanning parts of North Africa all the way up to polar regions. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Ant stings can be painful—here's how to avoid getting stung this summer (and what to do if you do)

With the start of summer just days away, many of us will be looking forward to long sunny days spent at the beach, by the pool, out camping or picnicking in the park. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

WEAVE spectrograph uncovers dual nature of galaxy shock

Using the set of first-light observations from the new William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) wide-field spectrograph, a team of more than 50 astronomers, led by Dr. Marina Arnaudova at the University of Hertfordshire, has presented the first WEAVE sci … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Five common misconceptions about women and entrepreneurship

Women entrepreneurs are essential for the Canadian economy, a fact recognized by the government's Women Entrepreneurship Strategy. This strategy was launched in 2018 and has seen nearly $7 billion be put toward supporting women-owned businesses in Canada. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

New tools filter noise from evolution data

While rates of evolution have appeared to accelerate over short time periods, new analysis suggests that statistical noise is affecting the data patterns. A professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and his colleague have developed new tools to help researchers filter … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Storms bring chaos to Ireland, France, UK

Ireland, Britain and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

World approves UN rules for carbon trading between nations at COP29

New rules allowing wealthy polluting countries to buy carbon-cutting "offsets" from developing nations were agreed at UN climate talks Saturday, a move already raising fears they will be used to greenwash climate targets. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Mounting economic costs of India's killer smog

Noxious smog smothering the plains of north India is not only choking the lungs of residents and killing millions, but also slowing the country's economic growth. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Scientists seek miracle pill to stop methane cow burps

A scientist guides a long tube into the mouth and down to the stomach of Thing 1, a two-month-old calf that is part of a research project aiming to prevent cows from burping methane, a potent greenhouse gas. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

Main points of the $300 billion climate deal

The deal reached at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan ramps up the money that wealthy historic emitters will provide to help poorer nations transition to cleaner energy and adapt to global warming. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 17 days ago

The dark energy pushing our universe apart may not be what it seems, scientists say

Distant, ancient galaxies are giving scientists more hints that a mysterious force called dark energy may not be what they thought. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Time is running out for a treaty to end plastic pollution—here's why it matters

On March 2, 2022, delegates to the UN environment assembly adopted an ambitious resolution to develop the text of a new treaty by the end of 2024 to end plastic pollution. With 24 days of formal negotiation between almost 200 countries completed, spread over meetings in Peru, Fra … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Sustainable method can electrosynthesize important chemical for synthetic rubber production

Chemists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a sustainable method to electrosynthesize 1,3-butadiene, a feedstock used for synthetic rubber production, from acetylene. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

New maps show high-risk zones for whale-ship collisions—vessel speed limits and rerouting can reduce the toll

Imagine you are a blue whale swimming up the California coast, as you do every spring. You are searching for krill in the Santa Barbara Channel, a zone that teems with fish, kelp forests, seagrass beds and other undersea life, but also vibrates with noise from ship traffic. Sudde … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Opinion: The peer review system no longer works to guarantee academic rigor—a different approach is needed

Peer review is a central feature of academic work. It's the process through which research ends up published in an academic journal: independent experts scrutinize the work of another researcher in order to recommend if it should be accepted by a publisher and if and how it shoul … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Healthy elbow room: Social distancing in Neolithic mega-settlements

The term "social distancing" spread out across the public vocabulary in recent years as people around the world changed habits to combat the COVID pandemic. New research led by UT Professor Alex Bentley, however, reveals the practice of organized elbow room could date back approx … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

First successful test of wild minke whales reveals they have ultrasonic hearing

A team of marine biologists from Norway, the U.S. and Denmark has conducted the first hearing test of a live baleen whale. For their study published in the journal Science, the group corralled a pair of wild minke whales and recorded their brain waves. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Extending classical black hole inequalities into the quantum realm

A recent study in Physical Review Letters explores quantum effects on black hole thermodynamics and geometry, focusing on extending two classical inequalities into the quantum regime. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Saturday Citations: Sweaty, remarkable humans; ocean level rise projections; closeup of a star in another galaxy

Since we last spoke, researchers at the University of Birmingham have defined the precise shape of a single photon (spoiler: roundish). Economists worry that Trump's grandiose deportation plans could lead to a recession. And astronomers report that the Milky Way may not be truly … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Developing nations slam 'paltry' $300 bn climate deal

The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 18 days ago

Earliest fish-trapping facility in Central America discovered in Maya lowlands

An archaeologist from the University of New Hampshire and her team have collected data which indicates the presence of a large-scale pre-Columbian fish-trapping facility. Discovered in the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary (CTWS), the largest inland wetland in Belize, the team date … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 19 days ago

'e-Drive': New gene drive reverses insecticide resistance in pests... then disappears

Insecticides have been used for centuries to counteract widespread pest damage to valuable food crops. Eventually, over time, beetles, moths, flies and other insects develop genetic mutations that render the insecticide chemicals ineffective. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 19 days ago

Natural substance from edible cyanobacterium could combat skin aging by enhancing collagen

Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, have existed for billions of years, adapting to a diverse range of environments. Their remarkable ability to photosynthesize and make their own food, as well as their adaptability across a variety of habitats, make them a subject of focus for t … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 19 days ago

Exploring the impact of offshore wind on whale deaths

In the winter of 2022–2023, nearly a dozen whales died off the coast of New Jersey, near the sites of several proposed wind farms. Their deaths prompted concern that related survey work being conducted in the area somehow contributed to their deaths. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 19 days ago

On the trail of an 18th-century master forger: New evidence discovered

A document held in Göttingen University's Faculty of Humanities has been revealed as an 18th century forgery. The document purports to be from 1266, but mentions a church in Pisa that was not built until later. This discovery is the result of research by Dr. Boris Gübele, histori … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 19 days ago

Peaches spread across North America through Indigenous networks, radiocarbon dating and document analysis show

Spanish explorers may have brought the first peach pits to North America, but Indigenous communities helped the ubiquitous summer fruit really take root, according to a study led by a researcher at Penn State. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 19 days ago

Scientists transform blood into regenerative materials, paving the way for personalized, 3D-printed implants

Scientists have created a new 'biocooperative' material based on blood, which has been shown to successfully repair bones, paving the way for personalized regenerative blood products that could be used as effective therapies to treat injury and disease. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 24 days ago

Worm species thought to have disappeared has been appearing in photos of pygmy seahorses all along

A small team of marine scientists from the University of the Ryukyus, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Kuroshio Biological Research Foundation, has found that a worm species thought to be missing since 1957 has been appearing in photographs taken by citi … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 24 days ago

Dinosaur skeleton fetches 6 million euros in Paris sale

The skeleton of a 22-meter-long dinosaur (70 feet) fetched six million euros ($6.4 million) Saturday, AFP learned from auction houses Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 24 days ago

Super Typhoon Man-yi batters Philippines' most populous island

Super Typhoon Man-yi slammed into the Philippines' most populous island on Sunday, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 24 days ago

California researchers discover mysterious, gelatinous new sea slug

More than two decades after spotting a mysterious, gelatinous, bioluminescent creature swimming in the deep sea, California researchers this week announced that it is a new species of sea slug. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 24 days ago

US flood governance drives social inequity, and maybe the next housing market crash

A recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment looked at the current US National Flood Insurance Program, and how, without drastic changes, another housing crash could be on the horizon. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 25 days ago

Selenoproteins open new strategies for treating certain cancers in children

Selenoproteins are crucial for several biological functions, including the breakdown of harmful substances, immune system support, and regulating metabolic processes. However, in specific contexts, these proteins can be misused and shield cancer cells from death. One such protein … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 25 days ago

A new way to detect daisy worlds

The daisy world model describes a hypothetical planet that self-regulates, maintaining a delicate balance involving its biogeochemical cycles, climate, and feedback loops that keep it habitable. It's associated with the Gaia Hypothesis developed by James Lovelock. How can we dete … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 25 days ago

Extreme heat weakens land's power to absorb carbon, analysis finds

A new European Space Agency-backed study shows that the extreme heat waves of 2023, which fueled huge wildfires and severe droughts, also undermined the land's capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon. This diminished carbon uptake drove atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to new hig … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 25 days ago

Study links relative brain volume to temperament in diverse dog breeds

Researchers from the University of Montpellier, the University of Zurich, Naturhistorisches Museum Bern, and other institutions have found that breed function and behavior correlate with relative endocranial volume (REV) in domestic dogs. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 25 days ago