Interstellar Methane as Progenitor of Amino Acids?

Gamma radiation converts methane into glycine and other complex molecules

08-Nov-2024 - Gamma radiation can convert methane into a wide variety of products at room temperature, including hydrocarbons, oxygen-containing molecules, and amino acids, reports a research team in the journal Angewandte Chemie. This type of reaction probably plays an important role in the formation of ...

Gamma radiation helps to understand the mesocrystal formation

24-Dec-2021 - Using targeted gamma radiation, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have revealed the appearance and the specific role of non-crystalline phases during the formation of mesocrystals – crystals consisting of aligned nanoparticles. Their findings provide fundamental ...

New ‘super light source’ should allow fascinating insights into atoms

‘Gamma Factory’ will enable not only breakthroughs in spectroscopy but also novel ways of testing fundamental symmetries of nature

24-Jul-2020 - The ‘Gamma Factory initiative’ – an international team of scientists – is currently exploring a novel research tool: They propose to develop a source of high-intensity gamma rays using the existing accelerator facilities at CERN. To do this, specialized ion beams will be circulated in the SPS and ...

New research shows how complex chemistry may be relevant to origins of life on Earth

09-Jun-2020 - Chemists have long sought to understand the origins of life, with one popular model suggesting life began when simple RNA molecules capable of copying themselves formed spontaneously in the primitive environment. How this happened exactly is fraught with difficulties. New research by a team of ...

Novel materials convert visible into infrared light

Penetrate of living tissue and other materials without damage by high-intensity light exposure

18-Jan-2019 - Columbia University scientists, in collaboration with researchers from Harvard, have succeeded in developing a chemical process to convert visible light into infrared energy, allowing innocuous radiation to penetrate living tissue and other materials without the damage caused by high-intensity ...

Common table salt may have been crucial for the origins of life

30-Nov-2018 - One of the most fundamental unexplained questions in modern science is how life began. Scientists generally believe that simple molecules present in early planetary environments were converted to more complex ones that could have helped jumpstart life by the input of energy from the environment. ...

Nobel Prize for Physics 2018 announced

Appreciation of the research in laser physics

02-Oct-2018 - The researchersArthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland were announced today as this year's winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their achievements in the field of laser physics was groundbreaking and worthy of the Nobel Prize Committee's appreciation. The discovery of optical ...

Better Imaging Using Sound

A microscopy technique in which sound is measured instead of light.

28-Sep-2018 - Individual molecules cannot be photographed – if you wish to visualise objects that are smaller than the wavelength of light, you'll need a few special tricks up your sleeve. You can use electron microscopes for example, or determine the position of specific fluorescent molecules by taking a ...

A new method for studying semiconductor nanoparticles has been tested

17-May-2018 - A team from Siberian Federal University and Kirensky Institute of Physics (Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences) applied a new method to study nanoparticles made of cadmium telluride (CdTe). They used a peculiar feature of this compound: its interaction with light differs ...

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox observed in many-particle system for the first time

27-Apr-2018 - Physicists from the University of Basel have observed the quantum mechanical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in a system of several hundred interacting atoms for the first time. The phenomenon dates back to a famous thought experiment from 1935. It allows measurement results to be predicted ...