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If a dangerous asteroid were headed toward Earth, one defense could be a nuclear detonation to blast one side with X-rays and nudge it off course. But new simulations suggest that for a lumpy, irregular asteroid, exactly where those X-rays hit could make a huge difference.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Should an area be fenced off, should animals be sterilized or relocated—or, as a last resort, selectively culled? As the long-running controversy over white-tailed deer in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil's Michel-Chartrand Park has shown, managing wildlife in peri-urban parks isn't just about the science. Emotions, trust and how decisions are communicated also play a role.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →With their mysterious glow and swirling veils of color, auroras enchant even experienced researchers. When a particularly intense solar storm reached Earth on the night of May 10, 2024, and relevant websites predicted auroras even for southern Lower Saxony, several researchers from the Technical University of Braunschweig, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, the University of…
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Astrophysicists think that the supermassive black holes (SMBH) we see in the modern universe are the result of a long, drawn-out process. That process is referred to as the hierarchical black hole mergers framework. It explains how some SMBHs can reach such staggering masses. Some of the most massive appear to have billions of solar masses.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →More than a century after they were excavated from beneath Cairo, almost 3,000 stone tools from Heliopolis show that specialized work was already reshaping village life before Egypt became a state.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Tree planting provides wood, biomass and climate benefits, but the location where those new forests are established matters. An international study by researchers in Spain, Chile and Finland shows that converting nonforested land into planted forests can increase wildfire activity, with contrasting outcomes across temperate regions.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Recent media reports of alleged sexual assaults by teenage boys draw attention to an uncomfortable truth: Young people sometimes perpetrate harmful sexual behavior against their peers.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Physicists have found evidence of a particle decay so rare that it is expected to occur only around once in every 10 billion "beauty" particles. The result, from the upgraded LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), follows a search spanning more than 40 years and brings physicists closer to exploring the "Zeptoverse"—an unexplored world that exists at distances of a billionth of a trillionth of a…
Phys.org ResearchRead article →High temperatures change how mealybugs feed, and that could help explain why some pasture mealybug infestations do far more damage than others, according to early findings from Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →A newly identified Arctic Ocean bacterium may have an unusual way of making the building blocks it needs to grow. Using acetone, a common chemical in seawater, the bacteria incorporate carbon dioxide (CO₂) into their metabolisms, allowing them to survive in waters where nutrients and usable organic matter are scarce.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →During his renowned excavations at the Shanidar Cave in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, American archaeologist Ralph Solecki located burial sites containing pollen and flower fragments from various species of wildflowers. He interpreted this as evidence that Neanderthals may have placed flowers around their dead at their burial sites around 60,000 years ago.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →University at Buffalo scientists have found evidence that different species of yeast have shared genes originally acquired from an ancient virus—and the guts and droppings of beetles may have helped make it happen.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →New publication from Phys.org Research. View the publisher for full details.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Yale research scientist Saúl Domínguez-Guerrero didn't set out to catch "evolution in the act" when he traveled to the Caribbean with a team of Yale researchers a few years ago. At the time, the team from the lab of evolutionary biologist Martha Muñoz planned to do fieldwork on Caribbean anoles, colorful, tree-dwelling lizards native to warmer regions of the Americas.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Researchers at The University of Queensland have developed a way to quantify how wheat varieties capture and convert soil water. Dr. Raul Gimenez from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation said the technique could be used to identify drought-tolerant crops.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →A faint red object spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope originally appeared to offer a possible glimpse of the universe's first galaxies. But images taken about 3½ years apart revealed a giveaway: The object, nicknamed Capotauro, had moved.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →WA Police are using live facial recognition technology to help identify and arrest criminals, with significant results. The trial is the first of its kind in Australia.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Stanford engineers and colleagues designed a chip that can take a muddled mixture of light from multiple lasers and output clean beams of light. It's the first time researchers have demonstrated a device that can take in mixed, or partially coherent, light and sort its photons into a clear set of separate beams.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →When fishers are out working their boats, they are typically targeting a specific type of fish. However, other species often end up in their nets or trawls as well. This is known as "bycatch"—seafood for which the fishers receive no payment. Although it is illegal to discard bycatch back into the sea, it still happens.
Phys.org ResearchRead article →Eating an avocado and a cup of mango every day may provide surprising benefits for heart health, according to a new study involving adults with prediabetes. After just eight weeks, participants experienced significant improvements in blood vessel function and diastolic blood pressure, particularly among men.
ScienceDaily AllRead article →Scientists have uncovered an unexpected connection between inflammation during pregnancy, placental damage, and autism-like traits in male mice, while females appeared naturally protected. The discovery could help explain why autism is diagnosed more frequently in boys and reveal new opportunities for early intervention.
ScienceDaily AllRead article →NASA’s Voyager 1 is approaching an extraordinary milestone nearly 50 years after its launch, even as engineers battle dwindling power and mysterious technical problems. A clever energy-saving maneuver has extended the spacecraft’s scientific mission, while an unexplained 48-hour communications blackout recently gave NASA a scare.
ScienceDaily AllRead article →Scientists have discovered all five essential nucleobases used in DNA and RNA in pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu, revealing that key ingredients for life existed in space billions of years ago. The remarkable finding adds to growing evidence from other asteroids and meteorites that these molecules were widespread throughout the early Solar System.
ScienceDailyRead article →A surprising new discovery suggests that fear may cause the brain to blur the line between danger and safety rather than distinguish them more clearly. By observing brain activity in mice using augmented reality, scientists found that memories of threatening and harmless environments began to overlap, potentially allowing faster responses to danger.
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