Free Republic

New research has revealed that chemical reactions previously thought to be 'impossible' in space actually occur 'with vigour,' a discovery that could ultimately change our understanding of how alcohols are formed and destroyed in space - and which could also mean that places like Saturn's moon Titan, once considered too cold for life to form, may have a shortcut for biochemical reactions. A team at the University of Leeds, UK recreated the cold environment of space in the laboratory and observed a reaction of the alcohol methanol and an oxidising chemical called the 'hydroxyl radical' at minus 210 degrees Celsius....

Can you give us a sneak preview of your Pittcon plenary lecture ‘Exameter objects to nanometer ones and back again’?What I want to emphasise in this lecture is that the discovery of C60 started off from an interest in massive clouds of gas in interstellar space – some of them are 100 light years across. The chemistry in those clouds is quite fascinating and, in some parts of them, you find carbon is rather abundant. I thought that this carbon was coming out of stars and my interest led to the experiments that uncovered C60. That prompted conjectures about whether...

French and Italian scientists have analysed a meteorite and discovered that it contains a unique and primordial rock fragment that is thought to have remained largely unaltered since the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. The scientists believe the xenolith, which shows unprecedented isotopic variations of nitrogen, may offer insight into the solar system's formation and say it poses serious problems for current models of light element isotopic fractionation.  Light element isotopic ratios are the result of formation mechanisms and particular physical and chemical conditions. Understanding them can therefore help determine whether extraterrestrial materials formed in the solar nebula...

Although comets form at the frigid edges of the solar system, they appear somehow to contain minerals that form only in the presence of liquid water, and at much warmer temperatures, scientists are reporting today. On July 4, as planned, part of the Deep Impact spacecraft - essentially an 820-pound, washing machine-size bullet - slammed into the comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles an hour. The collision tossed up thousands of tons of ice and dust from the comet that were observed by telescopes on Earth as well as small flotilla of spacecraft. One of the observers was the Spitzer...