Asteroids are less pristine than comets, having often endured heating and the effects of liquid water. But these effects can produce dramatic new organic complexity. For decades, scientists have known that meteorites called chondrites, which originate from asteroids, contain a staggering diversity of organic molecules. The Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969, contains […]
Schematic of the experimental approach. Credit: IMP, from Physical Review Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.193002 A new study published in Physical Review Letters and led by researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has demonstrated that a Coulomb explosion induced by highly charged ions is a unique tool […]
Organic molecules, which contain carbon (pictured), form certain shapes because of how their atoms bond.Credit: Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science Photo Library For the first time, chemists have made a class of molecules previously thought too unstable to exist, and used them to generate exotic compounds1. Scientists say these notorious molecules, known as anti-Bredt olefins (ABOs), offer […]
Scientists have broken a 100-year-old chemistry rule to synthesize a class of molecules previously thought to be too unstable to form. The molecules in question violate Bredt’s rule, which describes where certain types of bonds can occur within a class of 3D chemical compounds. Successfully synthesizing these “anti-Bredt” molecules, as described Nov. 1 in the […]
Astronomers have discovered one of the largest carbon-based molecules found in deep space, located within the Taurus molecular cloud, 430 light-years from Earth. The finding is significant because it provides further clues that might help solve a longstanding mystery in astrochemistry: Where does carbon, the building block of life, come from? The molecule, called pyrene, […]
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Two scientists, Victor Ambros (UMASS Chan Medical School in the US) and Gary Ruvkun (Harvard Medical School in the US), have won the 2024 Nobel prize in medicine or physiology. They received the prestigious award for discovering tiny molecules in our cells called microRNAs. This discovery has not only changed our […]
