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Categories: Chemistry: General, Offbeat: Space

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Brown dwarfs are objects that straddle the dividing line between stars and planets. They form like stars, growing dense enough to collapse under their own gravity, but they never become dense and hot enough to begin fusing hydrogen and turn into a star. At the low end of the scale, some brown dwarfs are comparable with giant planets, weighing just a few times the mass of Jupiter.

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The transition to a society without fossil fuels means that the need for batteries is increasing at a rapid pace. At the same time, the increase will mean a shortage of the metals lithium and cobalt, which are key components in the most common battery types. One option is a sodium-ion battery, where table salt and biomass from the forest industry make up the main raw materials. Now, researchers show that these sodium-ion batteries have an equivalent climate impact as their lithium-ion counterparts -- without the risk of running out of raw materials. 

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What would be the most effective use of a certain plot of land in terms of the climate crisis: planting a forest, which is a natural means of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or erecting fields of solar panels, which reduce the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? This dilemma has long been debated by decision-makers around the world. Now, for the first time -- based on findings from arid areas and on comprehensive measurements of the energy flow exchanged between the ground and the atmosphere -- we may have an answer to this question.  

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Scientists have solved a decades-long puzzle and unveiled a near unbreakable substance that could rival diamond, as the hardest material on earth, a study says. Researchers found that when carbon and nitrogen precursors were subjected to extreme heat and pressure, the resulting materials -- known as carbon nitrides -- were tougher than cubic boron nitride, the second hardest material after diamond.

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A new study expands the search for life beyond our solar system by indicating that 17 exoplanets (worlds outside our solar system) could have oceans of liquid water, an essential ingredient for life, beneath icy shells. Water from these oceans could occasionally erupt through the ice crust as geysers. The science team calculated the amount of geyser activity on these exoplanets, the first time these estimates have been made. They identified two exoplanets sufficiently close where signs of these eruptions could be observed with telescopes.

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The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) spacecraft is about the size of a cereal box. It has also recorded incredibly detailed measurements of the atmospheres of planets hundreds of light-years from Earth.

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Self-propelled nanoparticles could potentially advance drug delivery and lab-on-a-chip systems -- but they are prone to go rogue with random, directionless movements. Now, an international team of researchers has developed an approach to rein in the synthetic particles.

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While the lithium-ion batteries in disposable electronic cigarettes are discarded after a single use, they can continue to perform at high capacity for hundreds of cycles, according to a new study. The analysis highlights a growing environmental threat from these increasingly popular vape pens, which are not designed to be recharged.

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A new article covering an overview and trends of plastic production and degradation technology using microorganisms has been published. Eco-friendly and sustainable plastic production and degradation technology using microorganisms as a core technology to achieve a plastic circular economy was presented.

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Experts have developed a way of using polyethylene waste (PE) as a feedstock and converted it into valuable chemicals, via light-driven photocatalysis. PE is the most widely used plastic in the world including for daily food packaging, shopping bags and reagent bottles, and the researchers say that while recycling of PE is still in early development, it could be an untapped resource for re-use.

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While auroras occur at high latitude, the associated phenomena Steve and the picket fence occur farther south and at lower altitude. Their emissions also differ from aurora. A physics graduate student has proposed a physical mechanism behind these emissions, and a rocket launch to test the theory. She argues that an electric field in the upper atmosphere parallel to Earth's magnetic field could explain the green picket fence spectrum and perhaps Steve and the enhanced aurora.

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In hopes of producing concrete structures that can repair their cracks, researchers are putting a new twist on an old trick for improving the durability of concrete. Fiber reinforcement has been around since the first masons were mixing horsehair into their mud. But this research team is taking this method to the next level by turning reinforcing fibers into a living tissue system that rushes concrete-healing bacteria to the site of cracks to repair the damage.

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According to anthropologists and geologists, it's time to acknowledge humans have become the dominant force shaping the moon's environment by declaring a new geological epoch for the moon: the Lunar Anthropocene. They argue the new epoch may have dawned in 1959 when the USSR's unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface.

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After more than a decade of developing fluorescent probes, a research team has now released the culmination of their years of work: A comprehensive collection of rhodamine-based dyes, the novel chemistry they developed to synthesize them and insights that provide a roadmap for designing future probes.

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How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the periodic table found naturally on Earth. The finding deepens our understanding of element formation in stars.

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Scientists chipping away at one of the great challenges of metal-catalyzed C--H functionalization with a new method that uses a cobalt catalyst to differentiate between bonds in fluoroarenes, functionalizing them based on their intrinsic electronic properties. And their method is fast -- comparable in speed to those that rely on iridium.

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Chemists have now come up with a way to make molecules known as acenes more stable, allowing them to synthesize acenes of varying lengths. Using their new approach, they were able to build molecules that emit red, orange, yellow, green, or blue light, which could make acenes easier to deploy in a variety of applications.

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A collaboration between quantum physicists and astrophysicists has achieved a significant breakthrough in understanding neutron star glitches. They were able to numerically simulate this enigmatic cosmic phenomenon with ultracold dipolar atoms. This research establishes a strong link between quantum mechanics and astrophysics and paves the way for quantum simulation of stellar objects from Earth.

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Through analysis of high-resolution data from a ten-meter telescope in Hawaii, researchers have succeeded in generating new knowledge about three stars at the very heart of the Milky Way. The stars proved to be unusually young with a puzzling chemical composition that surprised the researchers.

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Researchers have shown unambiguous laboratory evidence that amino acids transported in the ice plumes of Saturn's moon, Eceladus, can survive impact speeds of up to 4.2 km/s, supporting their detection during sampling by spacecraft.