In September 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought home a remarkable gift: the first pristine sample ever collected from a carbon-rich asteroid called Bennu. After two years of careful study in laboratories worldwide, scientists have confirmed that Bennu’s dust and pebbles contain many of the very same small molecules life on Earth relies on as its […]
Catalysis • Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • DIPC Interfaces • Nanotechnology
When we think of atoms sitting on a surface, we tend to imagine them as fairly still, especially at very low temperatures (colder than liquid nitrogen, in fact). Yet in modern surface science we often discover the opposite: atoms can be surprisingly restless, gliding from place to place in ways that shape how materials grow […]
Order on a molecular scale is difficult to control. The systems with highest possible order are crystals, formed by long arrays of repeating constituent components in all directions. The most familiar examples of crystals encountered in daily life are table salt and sucrose, the sugar in our kitchens. Every grain of table salt is a […]
From the burning of wood to the action of medicines, the properties and behavior of matter are governed by the way chemical elements bond with one another. For many of the 118 known elements, the intricate electronic structures of the atoms that are responsible for chemical bonding are well understood. But for the superheavy elements […]
Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), a rare but aggressive cancer of the bile ducts, poses a major challenge for doctors and patients. It’s tough to treat, with limited options beyond surgery, and systemic drugs like chemotherapy often fall short. Cisplatin, a classic platinum-based chemo drug, works against many solid tumours but has only modest effects in CCA. Worse […]
When astronauts returned from NASA’s final Apollo moon mission in 1972, some of the samples they collected were sealed and carefully stored away in the hope that future researchers using advanced equipment might analyze them and make new discoveries. Now, researchers report a sulphuric surprise in rock samples taken from the moon’s Taurus Littrow region […]
In polymer science, the classic division is between thermoplastics, which soften and flow when heated, and thermosets, which are permanently cross-linked and keep their shape no matter how hot they get—at least until they burn. In the last decade, researchers have discovered a fascinating new class of materials called vitrimers, which sit between these two […]
Plutonium has captured the attention of scientists since its discovery in the early 1940s. This enigmatic element has an important role to play in emerging energy technologies like nuclear batteries and reactors, but it also has complicated electronic behavior that causes some intriguing effects. Its electron structure contributes to unconventional entropic properties at low temperatures […]
Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • Quantum chemistry
Quantum computers promise to change how we calculate the behavior of electrons in molecules, but for the machines we have now — noisy, limited in size and coherence — the challenge is to squeeze the most chemistry out of the least quantum hardware. Now, a new paper introduces a practical trick to do exactly that: […]
Biology • Chemistry • Evolution • Geosciences • Microbiology • Planetary Science • Robotics
A new study has revealed potential chemical signatures of ancient Martian microbial life in rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The findings, published by a large international team of scientists, focus on a region of Jezero Crater known as the Bright Angel formation—a name chosen from locations in Grand Canyon National Park because of the […]