Lifeboat Foundation

If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet’s blisteringly inhospitable surface, Venus’ cloud layer, which extends from 30 to 40 miles above the surface, hosts milder temperatures that could support some extreme forms of life.

If it’s out there, scientists have assumed that any Venusian cloud inhabitant would look very different from life forms on Earth. That’s because the clouds themselves are made from highly toxic droplets of sulfuric acid—an intensely corrosive chemical that is known to dissolve metals and destroy most biological molecules on Earth.

But a new study by MIT researchers may challenge that assumption. Published today in the journal Astrobiology, the study reports that, in fact, some key building blocks of life can persist in solutions of concentrated sulfuric acid.

The performance of numerous cutting-edge technologies, from lithium-ion batteries to the next wave of superconductors, hinges on a physical characteristic called intercalation. Predicting which intercalated materials will be stable poses a significant challenge, leading to extensive trial-and-error experimentation in the development of new products.

Now, in a study recently published in ACS Physical Chemistry Au, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, and collaborating partners have devised a straightforward equation that correctly predicts the stability of intercalated materials. The systematic design guidelines enabled by this work will speed up the development of upcoming high-performance electronics and energy-storage devices.

Did Mars once contain life, or even the building block for life? This is what NASA’s Perseverance (Percy) rover has been trying to determine ever since it landed in Jezero Crater, which has shown an overwhelming amount of evidence to have once been site to a massive lakebed. Now, NASA recently announced that Percy has collected its 24th rock sample on March 11th, nicknamed “Comet Geyser”, with this sample being unlike the first 23 in that evidence suggests it was submerged in standing water for an indeterminant amount of time when Mars had liquid water billions of years ago.

Mosaic image of the drill holes where NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover extracted the “Comet Geyser” rock sample. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

“To put it simply, this is the kind of rock we had hoped to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater,” said Dr. Ken Farley, who is a project scientist for Perseverance and a professor of geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. “Nearly all the minerals in the rock we just sampled were made in water; on Earth, water-deposited minerals are often good at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures. The rock can even tell us about Mars climate conditions that were present when it was formed.”

A battery cathode in development in labs at the University of California San Diego has Wolverine-like self-healing properties.

Better yet, the regenerative ability of the lithium-sulfur electrode could help to unlock chemistry that doubles electric vehicle range, according to the experts. It’s a promising breakthrough with fascinating potential.

Continue reading “Scientists develop new material that could allow rechargeable batteries to ‘self-heal’: ‘We are very excited about the discovery’” »

Watch more videos on complexity and emergence: https://bit.ly/3TxyQBmThe world works at different levels—fundamental physics, physics, chemistry, biology, ps…

In an era where the quest for sustainable energy sources has become paramount, researchers are tirelessly exploring innovative avenues to enhance fuel production processes. One of the most important tools in converting chemical energy into electrical energy and vice versa is electrocatalysis, which is already used in various green-energy technologies.

After three years of collecting scores of data on hundreds of stars, the ULLYSES (Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards) survey conducted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope officially ended in December 2023, culminating in 220 total stars examined during the survey on data regarding their size, distance from Earth, temperature, chemical characteristics, and rotational speed. Additionally, ULYYSES also contains another 275 stars from the Hubble archive, providing researchers with several decades of new stellar data and holds the potential to help astronomers gain new insights into stellar formation and evolution throughout the universe.

Hubble image of a star-forming region known as the Tarantula Nebula, which contains massive, young blue stars, which was observed during the ULYYSES survey (top panel). Artist’s illustration of a cooler, redder, young star smaller than our Sun that is still gathering material from its planet-forming disk (bottom panel). (Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Francesco Paresce (INAF-IASF Bologna), Robert O’Connell (UVA), SOC-WFC3, ESO)

“I believe the ULLYSES project will be transformative, impacting overall astrophysics – from exoplanets, to the effects of massive stars on galaxy evolution, to understanding the earliest stages of the evolving universe,” said Dr. Julia Roman-Duval, who is Implementation Team Lead for ULLYSES and an Associate Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). “Aside from the specific goals of the program, the stellar data can also be used in fields of astrophysics in ways we can’t yet imagine.”

Physicists in the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (CUA) have developed a new approach to control the outcome of chemical reactions. This is traditionally done using temperature and chemical catalysts, or more recently with external fields (electric or magnetic fields, or laser beams).

MIT CUA physicists have now added a new twist to this: They have used minute changes in a magnetic field to make subtle changes to the quantum mechanical wavefunction of the colliding particles during the chemical reaction. They show how this technique can steer reactions to a different outcome: enhancing or suppressing reactions.

This was only possible by working at ultralow temperatures at a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, where collisions and chemical reactions occur in single quantum states. Their research was published in Science on March 4.

A team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics made a breakthrough in converting methane to formic acid using oxygen at room temperature through a high-pressure electro-Fenton process, achieving significantly higher efficiency and productivity than traditional methods.

Direct conversion of methane (CH₄) and oxygen (O₂) to value-added chemicals is important for natural gas industries. However, challenges remain due to the difficulty of O₂ activation in forming active oxygen species for CH₄ activation under mild conditions.

Recently, a research group led by Prof. Dehui Deng, Assoc. Prof. Xiaoju Cui and Liang Yu from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) realized the electrochemical conversion of CH₄ by O₂ to formic acid (HCOOH) at room temperature. This study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.