io9: mad chemistry

Nano Droplet of Acid Solves Ozone Depletion Mystery

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:53:10 PDT

Last week a group of scientists reported in Science that they had created the tinest droplet of acid ever produced on Earth. It was created within a superfluid helium cluster at 0.37 kelvin. Observing this ultra-small acid drop allowed researchers to study how such droplets interact with water in our atmosphere to create chlorine which eats up ozone. Until this experiment, nobody had understood how chlorine could be created in the cold wastes of our upper atmosphere. Now we know it's via the interactions between acid and water ice, which then erode holes in our ozone layer. Which leads to more ultraviolet spectrum hitting the planet, which leads to genetic mutations in many life forms.

And that's how one droplet of acid leads to mutants. Get the scoop at Science and on PhysOrg.

Scientists Create Fuel "More Dense Than The Core of the Sun"

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:29:06 PDT

It could be the perfect nuclear fuel. It generates energy via laser-enabled fusion. It has no radioactive byproducts. Has a group of Swedish researchers found the ultimate form of renewable energy for the 21st century?

Imagine a 10-centimeter cube that weighs 130 tons and is more dense than the core of the sun. Ultra-dense deuterium is just that heavy. Here you can see the facility where chemists are experimenting with the material, which they have managed to create in microscopic amounts at the University of Gothenburg. Deuterium atoms are packed together so tightly that they create an "ultra-dense" material.

When that material is heated up with lasers, those atoms fuse together and release a tremendous amount of energy. Also, according to researcher Lief Holmlid:

We believe that we can design the deuterium fusion such that it produces only helium and hydrogen as its products, both of which are completely non-hazardous. It will not be necessary to deal with the highly radioactive tritium that is planned for use in other types of future fusion reactors, and this means that laser-driven nuclear fusion as we envisage it will be both more sustainable and less damaging to the environment than other methods that are being developed.

My main question is: How can this be a renewable energy source if you still need lots of energy to create the ultra-dense deuterium and power up those lasers?

Cool fact: Scientists believe ultra-dense deuterium is naturally occurring on Jupiter. Time to get those orbital mines in shape.

via University of Gothenberg

They're Putting Anti-Aging Enzymes in the Water

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:15:40 PDT

Within about 10 years, you might be drinking anti-aging enzymes with your bottled water. California biochemists have a plan to keep the world younger and healthier by using nanotech to deliver an enzyme called CoQ10 to our drinking water. This coenzyme is naturally produced by the body, but in smaller and smaller amounts as we age. And yet it's vital for the body's basic functioning, as it helps our cells convert sugars to energy. Perhaps if we boost its presence in our bodies as we age, our organs will remain productive and healthy for much longer.

Decades ago, nutritionists lobbied the US government to add iodine to salt, because most US residents weren't getting enough iodine in their diets. Today, most of us here in the US accept that salt comes with iodine (though you can buy it without). Chemists like UC Santa Barbara's Bruce Lipshutz, who studies CoQ10, hope that in the future we will also accept the idea that CoQ10 comes in drinking water, perhaps along with several other vital vitamins and enzymes. So even if you want to grow old and die in the old-fashioned way, you may not be able to — at least, if you plan to drink water.

Nanotechnology Adds Vital Enzyme to Drinking Water [via ZDNet]

The Periodic Table of Elements, in Videos

Michael Reilly — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:00:00 PDT

What do you get when you mix a frizzy-haired, grandfatherly chemist with his younger, cackling, explosion-loving sidekick? The Periodic Table of Videos! Put together by a team at the University of Nottingham in the UK, this gargantuan effort of 118 short vids chronicled everything from Hydrogen (very explosive) to Oxygen (also very explosive) to Sodium (not explosive...until you add water!) on down the list all the way to Ununoctium, element 118, of which only three atoms have ever been observed. Check out the oxygen pyrotechnics below.

With over a hundred videos to choose from, there are going to be plenty of highlights to choose from. Make sure you hit the explosive vids (as noted above), as well as Mercury and Helium — no bangs there, but with Hg, Peter License talks about how he used to "play football (soccer) with it with our fingers back in school. We don't do that now because we care about our safety."

Take some time and noodle around through this awesome treasure trove of video chemistry, and whenever you find Peter License (he of the cackling) with a matchstick in his hand, you know a ball of fire is soon to follow. That's usually spliced in with Martyn Poliakoff soothingly delivering interesting tidbits about whatever element you're watching.

Source: The Periodic Table of Videos, via Creative Synthesis

Green Explosives Save the World Through Sustainable Warfare

Michael Reilly — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:30:00 PDT

If you're worried about the environment but still need to blow people up, a new class of nitrogen-based bomb materials is for you. Popular explosives like TNT and HMX react to form nitrogen oxides when detonated, the major culprits behind smog and acid rain. This is a big no-no if you're the type of warmonger who drives a hybrid tank, obviously, so weapons experts at the University of Munich devised an alternatives that are cleaner, more stable, and even more powerful than those other explosives.

Irony aside, the new compounds — dubbed HBT and G2ZT — reportedly only produce ammonia as their byproduct when they go boom. This is a good thing because many long-term health problems related to air pollution come from the formation of nitrogen oxides.

Of course if you make lots of super-powerful bombs out of HBT or G2ZT, many people probably won't be around to enjoy the cleaner air. But the researchers say another application would be cleaner rocket fuels, which we're going to need as flights into space become more and more common.

Source: American Chemical Society via EurekAlert