Category Archives: Phys.org

A new University of Mississippi study shows that some sound waves don’t just move forward—they also move slightly to the side. Understanding this movement could help researchers develop more precise acoustic tools. Likun Zhang, associate professor of physics and astronomy and senior scientist at the National Center for Physical Acoustics, published his team’s study on the behavior of spiral sound waves in Physical Review Letters.

A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known as GRB 230906A, was likely caused by the collision of two neutron stars hundreds of millions of years ago and is now shedding light on how the universe creates some of its heaviest elements.

Observations of the Rimae Bode region on the moon reveal five distinct types of terrain and identify several potential landing sites for China’s first crewed mission, according to research titled “Geology of Rimae Bode region as priority site candidate for China’s first crewed lunar mission.” The work is published in Nature Astronomy.

Asteroids are some of the oldest objects in the solar system: leftovers from the chaotic time when planets were assembling from dust and rock. They’re time capsules, preserving clues about what the early solar system was like, and, ultimately, what the building blocks of planets are.

In 2020, a study confirmed that two planets orbited the nearby red dwarf, GJ 887. Now, astronomers have confirmed the existence of two additional planets orbiting GJ 887 in a new study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The new study suggests that one of these newly confirmed planets is in the habitable zone.

At approximately 18:55 CET (17:55 UTC) on Sunday, March 8, 2026, a very bright fireball moving from the southwest to the northeast was observed by many people in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

Comet 3I/ATLAS continues to make astonishing headlines, thanks to new findings from astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This new research reveals that 3I/ATLAS is packed with an unusually large amount of the organic molecule methanol—more than almost all known comets in our own solar system.

Researchers in the US have demonstrated how quantum entanglement could be used to detect optical signals from astronomical sources at the single-photon level. Published in Nature, a team led by Pieter-Jan Stas at Harvard University showed how extremely weak light signals could be detected across a fiber link spanning more than 1.5 km—possibly paving the way for optical telescopes with unprecedented resolution.

Europe is struggling more and more with extreme heat in the summer. While climate change is the main reason for this increase, what specific physical mechanisms cause a heat wave? One important driver of weather conditions in Europe is the North Atlantic. For example, studies by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) have shown that heat build-up in the subtropical North Atlantic can lead to extremely hot summers in Europe several years later.

Red dwarfs make up the vast majority of stars in the galaxy. Such ubiquity means they host the majority of rocky exoplanets we’ve found so far—which in turn makes them interesting for astrobiological surveys. However, there’s a catch—astrobiologists aren’t sure the light from these stars can actually support oxygen-producing life. A new paper, available on the arXiv preprint server, by Giovanni Covone and Amedeo Balbi, suggests that they might not—when it comes to stellar light, quality is just as important as quantity. And according to their calculations, Earth-like biospheres are incredibly difficult to sustain around red dwarfs.

About 15% of asteroids near Earth have small moons orbiting them, making binary asteroid systems common in our cosmic neighborhood.

Life’s capacity to survive in simulated lunar and Martian soils has been explored in two papers published in Scientific Reports. Treating simulated lunar soil with both symbiotic fungi and worm-produced compost can significantly improve the likelihood of reproduction for chickpea plants growing in the soil, indicates one study. A separate paper suggests that some microbes may be able to absorb enough water from the atmosphere to grow in simulated Martian soil at atmospheric humidity levels comparable to those on the planet.

Ever since physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the concept in 1960, the “Dyson sphere” has been the holy grail of techno-signature hunters. A highly advanced civilization could build a “sphere” (or, in our more modern understanding, a “swarm” of smaller components) around their host star to harvest its entire energy output. We know, in theory at least, that such a swarm could exist—but what would it actually look like if we were able to observe one? A new paper, available on the arXiv pre-print server and soon to be published in Universe from Amirnezam Amiri of the University of Arkansas, digs into that question—and in the process discloses the types of stars that are the most likely to find them around.

A research team from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed an innovative model to accurately assess the carbon sequestration capacity of global salt marshes, addressing a long-standing gap in blue carbon accounting.

Italian astronomers have performed extensive spectroscopic monitoring of a recently discovered nova known as Vulpeculae 2024, also known as V615 Vul. Results of the new observations, presented in a paper published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, shed more light on the nature of Vulpeculae 2024, suggesting that it represents a rare class of hybrid novae.

Four years ago, NASA purposely smashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid to see if they could deflect it—a test to prove humanity could protect Earth from threatening space rocks.

Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have conducted the most detailed simulation of the interior of stars and disproved a theory scientists have believed for 45 years: that stars switch their rotation patterns as they age, with poles rotating faster than the equator in older stars. Scientists have now found that this switch may not occur. Stars maintain solar-type rotation, spinning fast at the equator and slow at the poles throughout their lifetime. The findings are published in Nature Astronomy.

Neutron stars harbor some of the most extreme environments in the universe: their densities soar to several times those of atomic nuclei, and they possess some of the strongest gravitational fields of any known objects, surpassed only by black holes. First observed in the 1960s, much of the internal composition of neutron stars is still unknown. Scientists are beginning to look to gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron‐star inspirals—pairs of mutually orbiting neutron stars—as possible sources of information about their interiors.

Finding Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars and identifying signs of life such as oxygen or water is a major goal in astronomy and a key interest for the public. Addressing this challenge speaks directly to one of humanity’s most fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? However, these planets are about 10 billion times dimmer than their stars in visible light, making direct detection extremely challenging.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy indicates that the dense, star- and dark-matter–rich environments around supermassive black hole binaries pack on the order of a million solar masses into each cubic parsec. The team used gravitational-wave data from pulsar timing arrays to probe galactic centers that are otherwise impossible to observe directly.