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Science News

Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.

'Mega heat waves' strengthened by interaction between soil moisture, atmospheric pressure and temperature
Science News

'Mega heat waves' strengthened by interaction between soil moisture, atmospheric pressure and temperature

A new study has found that a self-reinforcing interaction between temperature, soil moisture and atmospheric pressure is being triggered at high temperatures, making extreme heat waves 10% hotter than they would otherwise be. The study was published in Science Advances and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

📅 2026-11-06 19:00:08    •    Phys.org
Fruit fly study offers clues to insect survival in a hotter, drier world
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Fruit fly study offers clues to insect survival in a hotter, drier world

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have identified a specialized lipid barrier in the fruit fly pupa that protects against dehydration in dry and hot environments. Their findings also expose the lipid barrier's limit, suggesting that insects in some regions of the world may struggle to adapt to climate change.

📅 2026-11-06 19:00:02    •    Phys.org
Smart packaging film 'lights up' under UV as meat loses freshness
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Smart packaging film 'lights up' under UV as meat loses freshness

Food spoilage causes chemical changes that are not always easy to detect by appearance alone. To provide a clearer indication of freshness and quality, researchers at Kyushu University have developed a smart packaging film that changes color and glows under ultraviolet (UV) light as meat loses freshness. Tested with refrigerated mutton, the film responds to compounds released during spoilage, offering two ways to track changes in food quality. The findings are published in the Chemical Engineering Journal.

📅 2026-11-06 18:40:01    •    Phys.org
The worse climate change gets, the harder it becomes to stop it
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The worse climate change gets, the harder it becomes to stop it

This year may be seen as a turning point in the climate crisis. The U.N. has accepted that global warming is going to exceed 1.5°C, while climate scientists have concluded that the rate of warming has effectively doubled over the past decade.

📅 2026-11-06 18:20:01    •    Phys.org
SynFit guides enzyme engineering by balancing several useful traits at once
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SynFit guides enzyme engineering by balancing several useful traits at once

Enzymes are biology's tiny chemists. They help build, break and rearrange molecules quickly and precisely. In the lab, scientists have long put enzymes to work making useful chemicals. But nature's enzymes cannot do every reaction a researcher might want. Sometimes scientists need an enzyme to take on a job it did not evolve to do. That's where enzyme engineering comes in—researchers make changes to an enzyme, test how those changes affect what the enzyme does and look for versions that work better.

📅 2026-11-06 18:00:03    •    Phys.org
Vibrating mirrors of light create analog of a black hole event horizon
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Vibrating mirrors of light create analog of a black hole event horizon

Optical cavities are pairs of light-trapping mirrors and underpin the operation of lasers, atomic clocks and many types of precision sensors. If the distance between the mirrors is changed rapidly enough, some theories predict that the waves inside them should bunch together into short, intense pulses. So far, however, this prediction has never been tested directly.

📅 2026-11-06 17:40:11    •    Phys.org
Atom-scale model could help improve material growth for advanced electronics
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Atom-scale model could help improve material growth for advanced electronics

Penn State researchers have refined an atom-scale model of how silicon carbide changes from a solid into vapor during crystal growth, work that could help manufacturers produce higher-quality material for advanced electronics while reducing costly trial-and-error experiments.

📅 2026-11-06 17:20:07    •    Phys.org
States tax sports betting heavily, but gamblers may barely feel it
Science News

States tax sports betting heavily, but gamblers may barely feel it

Sports betting has grown explosively since 2018, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down a federal ban on it. Now, Americans wager more than $165 billion on sports annually, contributing to an industry larger than state-run lotteries even excluding prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket.

📅 2026-11-06 17:20:01    •    Phys.org
Scientists achieve record-breaking low temperature on China's space station, paving the way for new physics experiments
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Scientists achieve record-breaking low temperature on China's space station, paving the way for new physics experiments

Matter starts to behave differently at extremely low temperatures, creating conditions ideal for studying quantum physics and new states of matter. Now, researchers from China have achieved a new low-temperature record aboard their Tiangong space station. Their research, recently published in Science, might lead to a new generation of experiments in quantum physics and precision measurements in space.

📅 2026-11-06 17:00:17    •    Phys.org
Evolutionary history and genetic basis of spruce diversification revealed
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Evolutionary history and genetic basis of spruce diversification revealed

The genus Picea (spruce) is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere and is a dominant component of boreal and montane forests. Understanding the evolutionary processes that have shaped diversification and regional differentiation across the genus requires a well-resolved phylogeny of Picea. However, the evolutionary history of Picea has long been obscure due to conflicting genetic signals.

📅 2026-11-06 17:00:01    •    Phys.org
Technique that spots tRNAs in action could accelerate drug development for inherited diseases
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Technique that spots tRNAs in action could accelerate drug development for inherited diseases

Human cells turn genetic instructions into proteins with great precision. Critical for the translation of this information are transfer RNAs, or tRNAs, small molecules that read the genetic code three letters at a time and bring the matching building blocks of proteins, the amino acids, to the cell's protein-making machinery, the ribosome.

📅 2026-11-06 16:40:07    •    Phys.org
Have astronomers spotted Planet Nine?
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Have astronomers spotted Planet Nine?

Archived observations appear to show a moving object in the far-distant outer solar system, but its reality is unclear

📅 2026-11-06 11:45:00    •    Scientific American
Scientists just found dinosaur blood that survived 115 million years
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Scientists just found dinosaur blood that survived 115 million years

Scientists have discovered chemically confirmed traces of ancient blood inside 115-million-year-old dinosaur bones, challenging assumptions about how long biological molecules can survive. The extraordinary preservation could unlock new clues about dinosaur physiology and even help scientists search for ancient life elsewhere in the universe.

📅 2026-11-06 11:28:01    •    ScienceDaily