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Category: chemistry – Page 99

Freeze-frame: U of A researchers develop microscope that can see electrons in motion

Imagine owning a camera so powerful it can take freeze-frame photographs of a moving electron – an object traveling so fast it could circle the Earth many times in a second. Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed the world’s fastest electron microscope that can do just that.

They believe their work will lead to groundbreaking advancements in physics, chemistry, bioengineering, materials sciences and more.

“When you get the latest version of a smartphone, it comes with a better camera,” said Mohammed Hassan, associate professor of physics and optical sciences. “This transmission electron microscope is like a very powerful camera in the latest version of smartphones; it allows us to take pictures of things we were not able to see before – like electrons. With this microscope, we hope the scientific community can understand the quantum physics behind how an electron behaves and how an electron moves.”

Successful experiment paves the way for discovery of a new element

The search for new elements comes from the dream of finding a variant that is sufficiently stable to be long-lived and not prone to immediate decay. There is a theory in nuclear physics about an island of stability of superheavy elements. This is a potential zone in the upper part of the periodic table of as-yet-undiscovered elements that could remain stable for longer than just a few seconds. The aim is to explore the limits of stability of atomic nuclei.

Lithium Supply Crisis Averted: New Technology Doubles Extraction Efficiency

The demand for lithium, essential for powering sustainable technologies, is rising quickly, yet current methods leave up to 75% of the world’s lithium-rich saltwater sources inaccessible.

With some predicting global lithium supply could fall short of demand as early as 2025, the innovative technology – EDTA-aided loose nanofiltration (EALNF) – sets a new standard in lithium processing. The technology uniquely extracts both lithium and magnesium simultaneously, unlike traditional methods that treat magnesium salts as waste, making it smarter, faster and more sustainable.

The work, co-led by Dr Zhikao Li, from the Monash Suzhou Research Institute and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor Xiwang Zhang from the University of Queensland, promises to meet the surging demand for lithium and paves the way for more sustainable and efficient extraction practices.

This Radical New Farming Method Would Replace Photosynthesis With Solar Power

The reason? While sunny regions naturally provide enough light to grow crops, areas with colder winters often need grow lights and greenhouses part of the year. This increases energy consumption, logistical headaches, and ultimately, food costs.

In their paper, Jiao and colleagues argue for a new method that could dramatically revamp farming practices to reduce land use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Dubbed “electro-agriculture,” the approach uses solar panels to trigger a chemical reaction that turns ambient CO2 into an energy source called acetate. Certain mushrooms, yeast, and algae already consume acetate as food. With a slight genetic tweak, we could also engineer other common foods such as grains, tomatoes, or lettuce to consume acetate.

Study: Robotic automation, AI will speed up scientific progress in science laboratories

Science laboratories across disciplines—chemistry, biochemistry and materials science—are on the verge of a sweeping transformation as robotic automation and AI lead to faster and more precise experiments that unlock breakthroughs in fields like health, energy and electronics.

This is according to UNC-Chapel Hill researchers in a paper titled “Transforming Science Labs into Automated Factories of Discovery,” published in Science Robotics.

“Today, the development of new molecules, materials and requires intensive human effort,” said Dr. Ron Alterovitz, senior author of the paper and Lawrence Grossberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science. “Scientists must design experiments, synthesize materials, analyze results and repeat the process until desired properties are achieved.”

Unlocking the Mysteries of Celestial Flow Features

“Through our simulated impacts, we found that the pure water froze too quickly in a vacuum to effect meaningful change, but salt and water mixtures, or brines, stayed liquid and flowing for a minimum of one hour,” said Dr. Michael J. Poston.

How does extra salty water, also known as briny water, form and evolve on worlds without atmospheres, such as asteroids and moons? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how briny water could still flow for a period of time on the asteroid Vesta after large impacts resulted in the melting of subsurface ice. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the geological and chemical processes on planetary bodies without atmospheres and what this could mean for finding life as we know it.

“We wanted to investigate our previously proposed idea that ice underneath the surface of an airless world could be excavated and melted by an impact and then flow along the walls of the impact crater to form distinct surface features,” said Dr. Jennifer Scully, who is a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a co-author on the study.

For the study, the researchers used a JPL test chamber to analyze how liquid samples responded to rapid drops in atmospheric pressure on the asteroid Vesta, thus simulating the conditions of a high-speed impact, which also includes the very brief creation of an atmosphere resulting from that impact. In the end, the researchers made some intriguing findings that could help scientists better understand the geological and chemical processes that occur on planetary bodies without atmospheres.

Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean surface environments and life

Large meteorite impacts must have strongly affected the habitability of the early Earth. Rocks of the Archean Eon record at least 16 major impact events, involving bolides larger than 10 km in diameter. These impacts probably had severe, albeit temporary, consequences for surface environments. However, their effect on early life is not well understood. Here, we analyze the sedimentology, petrography, and carbon isotope geochemistry of sedimentary rocks across the S2 impact event (37 to 58 km carbonaceous chondrite) forming part of the 3.26 Ga Fig Tree Group, South Africa, to evaluate its environmental effects and biological consequences.

A Route Toward the Island of Stability

Scientists have synthesized an isotope of the superheavy element livermorium using a novel fusion reaction. The result paves the way for the discovery of new chemical elements.

How and where in the Universe are the chemical elements created? How can we explain their relative abundance? What is the maximum number of protons and neutrons that the nuclear force can bind in a single nucleus? Nuclear physicists and chemists expect to find answers to such questions by creating and studying new elements. But as elements get more and more massive, they become harder and harder to synthesize. The heaviest elements discovered so far were created by bombarding high-atomic-number (high-Z) actinide targets with beams of calcium-48 (48 Ca). This isotope is particularly suited to such experiments because of its peculiar nuclear configuration, in which the number of neutrons and protons are both “magic numbers.” Yet this approach could not produce elements beyond oganesson (proton number, Z = 118).

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