Magnetic and electric dipoles, objects with two oppositely charged ends, have a similar symmetrical structure. One might thus assume that they exhibit similar internal structures and physical states.
Using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, an international team of astronomers has detected three new millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster Messier 62 (also known as NGC 6266). The finding was detailed in a research paper…
Fukushima is now notorious for the nuclear disaster that took place in March 2011, the second worst of its kind after the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986. An earthquake-triggered tsunami off the Japanese coast damaged backup generators at…
Entanglement is a widely studied quantum physics phenomenon, in which two particles become linked in such a way that the state of one affects the state of another, irrespective of the distance between them. When studying systems comprised…
A pair of underwater researchers at the U.S. Navy's Naval Undersea Warfare Center, working with a colleague from the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, also in the U.S., has found that sounds emanating from coral reefs change as the…
A team of physicists and engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a new kind of small, highly sensitive gravimeter that can operate stably at room temperature. In their project, reported in the journal Physical…
Desertification is a significant problem for arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions of Earth, whereby grasslands and shrublands become a comparatively barren desert as vegetation disappears over time. This poses an extreme hazard to…
A pair of environmental scientists at Yunnan University, in China, has found an instance of a pair of spiders, one male, the other female, working together to create the image of a flower, thereby fooling both prey and predators.
A team of community health specialists at the Boston University School of Public Health, working with a psychiatrist from Brown University, has found evidence that suggests workers who have more job flexibility and security tend to have…
An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new mini-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a nearby star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-4438 b is about 2.5 times larger than the Earth. The finding was detailed in a…
Mode-locked lasers are advanced lasers that produce very short pulses of light, with durations ranging from femtoseconds to picoseconds. These lasers are widely used to study ultrafast and nonlinear optical phenomena, but they have also…
Pacific oysters, non-native to the United States but farmed in the U.S. for aquaculture, are an invasive species. During the Pacific Blob heat wave in the mid-2010s, as sea temperatures in Washington state's Puget Sound rose to 3°C above…
A team of archaeologists and paleontologists affiliated with several institutions in Brazil has found evidence that ancient artists living in what is now Brazil may have created petroglyphs that were inspired by preserved dinosaur…
Australia's Indigenous populations have played an important role in modifying the continent's landscape over millennia, particularly by using fire to create open spaces for daily activities. This continued until they left the area in…
Astronomers have discovered a new post-asymptotic giant branch (PAGB) star in a Galactic globular cluster known as ESO 37-1 (or E3 for short) and derived its fundamental parameters. The finding is reported in a research paper published…
In a new study, researchers have observed the freezing of saltwater droplets at a molecular level, offering new insights for de-icing and anti-icing technologies. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these droplets don't conform to the typical…
In a new study, scientists propose the concept of "virtual quantum broadcasting," which provides a workaround to the longstanding no-cloning theorem, thereby offering new possibilities for the transmission of quantum information.
If you missed some of our top stories this week, we have you covered. From an underachieving black hole to a new species of fluffy beetle, you can see it all here.
In dim light a cat sees much better than you do, as do dogs and nocturnal animals. That's because the structure of a cat's eye has a tapetum lucidum, a mirror-like layer immediately behind the retina. Light entering the eye that is not…
A team of aroma chemists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, working with psychologist colleagues from the Technical University of Dresden, has uncovered the reasons for the dissimilar smells between babies and teenagers.…
A team of researchers with varied backgrounds has found that using X (formerly Twitter) as a means to increase citations on research papers has little impact. In their study, published on the open-access site PLOS ONE, the group compared…
A trio of researchers at Chemistry Matters Inc., in Canada, has found evidence suggesting that more polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are being generated today than before they were banned.
Quantum spin liquids are fascinating quantum systems that have recently attracted significant research attention. These systems are characterized by a strong competition between interactions, which prevents the establishment of a long…
A team of archaeologists affiliated with several institutions in Chile reports evidence that early settlers on the island of Rapa Nui sailed to South America, interacted with people living there and then returned. In their study, published…
Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries are a promising alternative to lithium–ion batteries (LiBs), the most common rechargeable battery technology. As sulfur is abundant on Earth, these batteries could be cheaper and more environmentally…
Astronomers from the University of Oklahoma and their colleagues report the detection of four white dwarf stars of a recently discovered rare DAQ spectral subclass. The newfound white dwarfs are slightly more massive than the sun. The…
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have conducted near- and mid-infrared observations of an extremely metal-poor blue compact dwarf galaxy known as I Zwicky 18. Results of the observational campaign, presented in a paper…
A trio of animal science researchers at the University of Rhode Island, in the U.S., has identified five major shapes displayed by the beluga whale melon. For their study published in the journal Animal Cognition, Justin Richard, Isabelle…
A team of environmental scientists with the Food Packaging Forum Foundation, based in Zürich, has found evidence of 68 "forever chemicals" in food packaging used around the world. For their study, published in the journal Environmental…
An international team of astronomers reports the detection of a rare eclipsing Be/X-ray binary system as part of the Swift Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) Survey (S-CUBED). The finding was detailed in a research paper published March 12 on…