Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
Most of us recognize basic phases of matter and their properties: solids maintain their shape, liquids flow freely with constant volume, and gases expand to fill their container. Quantum phases, on the other hand, are much harder to categorize, overturning traditional notions of what a phase even is and forcing physicists to rethink their definitions.
Two cartoon characters appear on a screen. One belongs to a group of three, and the other to a group of two. Which character would you rather play with?
From coral reefs in Papua New Guinea to chimpanzees in West Africa, grizzly bears in Canada and albatross colonies off Tasmania, some ecosystems are thriving despite climate change, habitat loss and other environmental pressures.
Powerful waves thrashed communities along California's southern coast Friday, damaging homes and sending water cascading through streets as residents braced for more potential damage wrought by Tropical Storm Rachel.
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake jolted Panama on Friday, setting off panic in the capital city and warnings of dangerous tsunami waves.
Isaias weakened from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone early Saturday after it made landfall in northwestern Florida, where it lashed the U.S. Gulf Coast with heavy rain and strong winds, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Some insects, including honeybees and ants, live in highly organized colonies where individuals take on specific roles. In many ant societies, young adult workers typically care for developing young inside the nest before beginning to forage, or search for food, outside it. Some ant species, however, start hunting for food as soon as they reach adulthood, without undergoing a transition period.
Oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is a chemical reaction that directly converts methane and oxygen, the main components of natural gas, into higher-value hydrocarbons such as ethane and ethylene. However, the reaction presents a fundamental selectivity challenge.
The largest city in the Brazilian Amazon, Manaus, closed public schools on Friday as smoke from hundreds of wildfires blanketed the metropolis amid an intensifying El Niño event.
For decades, photojournalist Steve Winter has traveled across the world capturing incredible images of big cats as part of his work for National Geographic. Yet he didn't photograph an animal professionally until he was 34. "If anybody had said, 'You're going to work with big cats for 25 years of your career,' I would have said 'No, I don't know anything about big cats,'" he told Live Science. "But I learned from scientists and local people," he added. "That was very, very important — that's what, to me, was the biggest change in my life."Together with his wife, author and environmental journalist Sharon Guynup, Winter has helped change laws around big cats in the U.S.; revealed the horrors ...
The research offers yet another way the brewery industry might repurpose its myriad by-products
Physicists in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford have used a hybrid quantum computer, made up of qubits and quantum oscillators, to observe the Aharonov–Bohm effect in a quantum simulation. The effect is a quantum phenomenon in which a particle can acquire a measurable phase by traveling around a magnetic flux, even though it never passes through a region where a magnetic field is present.
Why taking a break from exercise doesn't may not mean you need to start from scratch
The written word is one of humanity's most important information technologies. Without it, mathematical and scientific discoveries would be lost to history. But it can also lock ideas in place long after they've stopped making sense. So does writing speed up cultural change or slow it down?Russell Gray, a professor in the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, heads a research project investigating how writing affects the way languages change. His team uses methods borrowed from evolutionary biology to trace languages through family trees — similar to the way biologists trace species. Language is one element of cu...
Chronic diabetic wounds may fail to heal because immune cells remain locked in damaging inflammatory states instead of transitioning toward tissue repair. Researchers are exploring treatments that reprogram these immune responses, raising hopes for more targeted and effective therapies for diabetic ulcers.
Scientists have developed a powerful new way to calculate the Kondo effect, a strange quantum phenomenon that appears when magnetic atoms are embedded in metals. Instead of relying on simplified models, the method uses the real atomic and electronic structures of materials, allowing researchers to predict their behavior with far greater accuracy.
Seventy-three years ago, Tenzing Norgay stood on top of Everest, known as Chomolungma in Tibetan, which roughly translates as "Goddess Mother of the World."
Mountains preserve evidence of ancient oceans, moving continents and tectonic processes that have shaped Earth over millions of years. Later deformation, erosion and burial, however, can obscure important parts of this geological record. An international research team led by Istanbul Technical University (ITU) has identified evidence of a previously unrecognized Late Cretaceous continental magmatic arc in northwestern Iran.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—a vast family of chemicals used largely for their nonstick, water-repellent and grease-resistant properties—are called "forever chemicals" because of their remarkable resistance to degradation. They are now ubiquitous in our environment.
Every black hole hides a question at its center. Einstein's theory predicts that whatever falls in is crushed into a singularity, a point of infinite density where the theory itself breaks down. Most physicists expect quantum gravity to replace that point with something finite. But the center lies hidden behind the horizon. How could we ever learn what is there?