Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

An artist’s impression of the new pure and massive brown dwarf. Credit: John Pinfield

An international team has identified a record breaking brown dwarf (a star too small for nuclear fusion) with the ‘purest’ composition and the highest mass yet known. The object, SDSS J0104+1535, is a member of the so-called halo – the outermost reaches – of our Galaxy, made up of the most ancient stars. Brown dwarfs are intermediate between planets and fully-fledged stars. Their mass is too small for full nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium (with a consequent release of energy) to take place, but they are usually significantly more massive than planets.

Located 750 light years away in the constellation of Pisces, SDSS J0104+1535 is made of gas that is around 250 times purer than the Sun, so consists of ...

Brookhaven scientists identified how a zinc/copper (Zn/Cu) catalyst transforms carbon dioxide (two red and one grey balls) and hydrogen (two white balls) to methanol (one grey, one red, and four white balls), a potential fuel. Under reaction conditions, Zn/Cu transforms to ZnO/Cu, where the interface between the ZnO and Cu provides the active sites that allow the formation of methanol.

Results will guide design of improved catalysts for transforming pollutant to useful chemicals. Capturing CO2 and converting it to useful chemicals such as methanol could reduce both pollution and our dependence on petroleum products. So scientists are intensely interested in the catalysts that facilitate such chemical conversions...

In this study, astronomers used data from the Keck and Spitzer telescopes to trace the star forming and dusty regions of galaxies at about 10 billion years ago. The picture in the background shows the GOODS field, one of the five regions in the sky that was observed for this study. Credit: Mario De Leo-Winkler with images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage team.

A molecule found in car engine exhaust fumes that is thought to have contributed to the origin of life on Earth has made astronomers heavily underestimate the amount of stars that were forming in the early Universe, a University of California, Riverside-led study has found. That molecule is called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). On Earth it is also found in coal and tar...

Stefan Freunberger, beneficiary of an ERC grant at TU Graz, investigates ageing processes in non-aqueous batteries. Credit: © Lunghammer – TU Graz

It has been known in biology for a long time that the excited oxygen molecule singlet oxygen is the main cause of aging in cells. To counter this, nature uses an enzyme called superoxide dismutase to eliminate superoxide as a free radical. Superoxide also occurs in cell respiration for energy production and is the preliminary stage and thus source of singlet oxygen. TU Graz’s Stefan Freunberger has now stumbled upon astonishing parallels of oxygen chemistry in battery systems.

He investigates aging processes in non-aqueous batteries, such as oxygen batteries, ie, battery systems in which oxygen reacts with lithium, sodium magnesium, for example...