Lunar dynamo's lifetime extended by at least 1 billion years

New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. Dynamos are natural generators of magnetic fields around terrestrial bodies, and are powered by the churning of conducting fluids within many stars and planets. In a paper published today in Science Advances, researchers from MIT and Rutgers University report that a lunar rock collected by NASA's Apollo 15 mission exhibits signs that it formed 1 to 2.5 billion years ago in the presence of a relatively weak magnetic field of about 5 microtesla. That's around 10 times weaker than Earth's current magnetic field but still 1,000 times larger than fields in interplanetary space today.

Full moon as seen from Earth's Northern Hemisphere, by Gregory H. Revera (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Several years ago, the same researchers identified 4-billion-year-old lunar rocks that formed under a much stronger field of about 100 microtesla, and they determined that the strength of this field dropped off precipitously around 3 billion years ago. At the time, the researchers were unsure whether the moon's dynamo - the related magnetic field - died out shortly thereafter or lingered in a weakened state before dissipating completely.

The results reported today support the latter scenario: After the moon's magnetic field dwindled, it nonetheless persisted for at least another billion years, existing for a total of at least 2 billion years.

Study co-author Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), says this new extended lifetime helps to pinpoint the phenomena that powered the moon's dynamo. Specifically, the results raise the possibility of two different mechanisms - one that may have driven an earlier, much stronger dynamo, and a second that kept the moon's core simmering at a much slower boil toward the end of its lifetime.

"The concept of a planetary magnetic field produced by moving liquid metal is an idea that is really only a few decades old," Weiss says. "What powers this motion on Earth and other bodies, particularly on the moon, is not well-understood. We can figure this out by knowing the lifetime of the lunar dynamo."

Weiss' co-authors are lead author Sonia Tikoo, a former MIT graduate student who is now an assistant professor at Rutgers; David Shuster of the University of California at Berkeley; Clément Suavet and Huapei Wang of EAPS; and Timothy Grove, the R.R. Schrock Professor of Geology and associate head of EAPS.

Since NASA's Apollo astronauts brought back samples from the lunar surface, scientists have found some of these rocks to be accurate "recorders" of the moon's ancient magnetic field. Such rocks contain thousands of tiny grains that, like compass needles, aligned in the direction of ancient fields when the rocks crystallized eons ago. Such grains can give scientists a measure of the moon's ancient field strength.

Until recently, Weiss and others had been unable to find samples much younger than 3.2 billion years old that could accurately record magnetic fields. As a result, they had only been able to gauge the strength of the moon's magnetic field between 3.2 and 4.2 billion years ago.

"The problem is, there are very few lunar rocks that are younger than about 3 billion years old, because right around then, the moon cooled off, volcanism largely ceased and, along with it, formation of new igneous rocks on the lunar surface," Weiss explains. "So there were no young samples we could measure to see if there was a field after 3 billion years."

There is, however, a small class of rocks brought back from the Apollo missions that formed not from ancient lunar eruptions but from asteroid impacts later in the moon's history. These rocks melted from the heat of such impacts and recrystallized in orientations determined by the moon's magnetic field.

Weiss and his colleagues analyzed one such rock, known as Apollo 15 sample 15498, which was originally collected on Aug. 1, 1971, from the southern rim of the moon's Dune Crater. The sample is a mix of minerals and rock fragments, welded together by a glassy matrix, the grains of which preserve records of the moon's magnetic field at the time the rock was assembled.

"We found that this glassy material that welds things together has excellent magnetic recording properties," Weiss says.

The team determined that the rock sample was about 1 to 2.5 billion years old - much younger than the samples they previously analyzed. They developed a technique to decipher the ancient magnetic field recorded in the rock's glassy matrix by first measuring the rock's natural magnetic properties using a very sensitive magnetometer.

They then exposed the rock to a known magnetic field in the lab, and heated the rock to close to the extreme temperatures in which it originally formed. They measured how the rock's magnetization changed as they increased the surrounding temperature.

"You see how magnetized it gets from getting heated in that known magnetic field, then you compare that field to the natural magnetic field you measured beforehand, and from that you can figure out what the ancient field strength was," Weiss explains.

The researchers did have to make one significant adjustment to the experiment to better simulate the original lunar environment, and in particular, its atmosphere. While the Earth's atmosphere contains around 20 percent oxygen, the moon has only imperceptible traces of the gas. In collaboration with Grove, Suavet built a customized, oxygen-deprived oven in which to heat the rocks, preventing them from rusting while at the same time simulating the oxygen-free environment in which the rocks were originally magnetized.

"In this way, we finally have gotten an accurate measurement of the lunar field," Weiss says.

From their experiments, the researchers determined that, around 1 to 2.5 billion years ago, the moon harbored a relatively weak magnetic field, with a strength of about 5 microtesla - two orders of magnitude weaker than the moon's field around 3 to 4 billion years ago. Such a dramatic dip suggests to Weiss and his colleagues that the moon's dynamo may have been driven by two distinct mechanisms.

Scientists have proposed that the moon's dynamo may have been powered by the Earth's gravitational pull. Early in its history, the moon orbited much closer to the Earth, and the Earth's gravity, in such close proximity, may have been strong enough to pull on and rotate the rocky exterior of the moon. The moon's liquid center may have been dragged along with the moon's outer shell, generating a very strong magnetic field in the process.

It's thought that the moon may have moved sufficiently far away from the Earth by about 3 billion years ago, such that the power available for the dynamo by this mechanism became insufficient. This happens to be right around the time the moon's magnetic field strength dropped. A different mechanism may have then kicked in to sustain this weakened field. As the moon moved away from the Earth, its core likely sustained a low boil via a slow process of cooling over at least 1 billion years.

"As the moon cools, its core acts like a lava lamp - low-density stuff rises because it's hot or because its composition is different from that of the surrounding fluid," Weiss says. "That's how we think the Earth's dynamo works, and that's what we suggest the late lunar dynamo was doing as well."

The researchers are planning to analyze even younger lunar rocks to determine when the dynamo died off completely.

"Today the moon's field is essentially zero," Weiss says. "And we now know it turned off somewhere between the formation of this rock and today."

This research was supported, in part, by NASA.

For more information, visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170809142039.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=oxygen-mcolortest-titrimetric&Id=26113

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

On this day in science history: oxygen was identified

In 1774, Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called "dephlogisticated air" - later known as oxygen. Priestley found that mercury heated in air became coated with "red rust of mercury," which, when heated separately, was converted back to mercury with "air" given off. Studying this "air" given off, he observed that candles burned very brightly in it. Also, a mouse in a sealed vessel with it could breathe it much longer than ordinary air. A strong believer in the phlogiston theory, Priestley considered it to be "air from which the phlogiston had been removed." Further experiments convinced him that ordinary air is one fifth dephlogisticated air, the rest considered by him to be phlogiston.

Joseph Priestley, by Charles Turner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

However, oxygen was in fact first discovered earlier, by Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. He had produced oxygen gas by heating mercuric oxide and various nitrates in 1771–2. Scheele called the gas "fire air" because it was the only known supporter of combustion, and wrote an account of this discovery in a manuscript he titled Treatise on Air and Fire, which he sent to his publisher in 1775. That document was published in 1777. 

Because Priestly published his findings first, he is usually given priority in the discovery.

The French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier later claimed to have discovered the new substance independently. Priestley visited Lavoisier in October 1774 and told him about his experiment and how he liberated the new gas. Scheele also posted a letter to Lavoisier on September 30, 1774 that described his discovery of the previously unknown substance, but Lavoisier never acknowledged receiving it (a copy of the letter was found in Scheele's belongings after his death). Long before this, one of the first known experiments on the relationship between combustion and air was conducted by the 2nd century BCE Greek writer on mechanics, Philo of Byzantium. In his work Pneumatica, Philo observed that inverting a vessel over a burning candle and surrounding the vessel's neck with water resulted in some water rising into the neck. Philo incorrectly surmised that parts of the air in the vessel were converted into the classical element fire and thus were able to escape through pores in the glass. Many centuries later Leonardo da Vinci built on Philo's work by observing that a portion of air is consumed during combustion and respiration.

In the late 17th century, Robert Boyle proved that air is necessary for combustion. English chemist John Mayow (1641–1679) refined this work by showing that fire requires only a part of air that he called spiritus nitroaereus. In one experiment, he found that placing either a mouse or a lit candle in a closed container over water caused the water to rise and replace one-fourteenth of the air's volume before extinguishing the subjects. From this he surmised that nitroaereus is consumed in both respiration and combustion.

Mayow observed that antimony increased in weight when heated, and inferred that the nitroaereus must have combined with it. He also thought that the lungs separate nitroaereus from air and pass it into the blood and that animal heat and muscle movement result from the reaction of nitroaereus with certain substances in the body. Accounts of these and other experiments and ideas were published in 1668 in his work Tractatus duo in the tract "De respiratione".

Robert Hooke, Ole Borch, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Pierre Bayen all produced oxygen in experiments in the 17th and the 18th century but none of them recognized it as a chemical element. This may have been in part due to the prevalence of the philosophy of combustion and corrosion called the phlogiston theory, which was then the favored explanation of those processes.

Established in 1667 by the German alchemist J. J. Becher, and modified by the chemist Georg Ernst Stahl by 1731, phlogiston theory stated that all combustible materials were made of two parts. One part, called phlogiston, was given off when the substance containing it was burned, while the dephlogisticated part was thought to be its true form, or calx.

Highly combustible materials that leave little residue, such as wood or coal, were thought to be made mostly of phlogiston; non-combustible substances that corrode, such as iron, contained very little. Air did not play a role in phlogiston theory, nor were any initial quantitative experiments conducted to test the idea; instead, it was based on observations of what happens when something burns, that most common objects appear to become lighter and seem to lose something in the process. The fact that a substance like wood gains overall weight in burning was hidden by the buoyancy of the gaseous combustion products.

This theory, while it was on the right track, was unfortunately set up backwards. Rather than combustion or corrosion occurring as a result of the decomposition of phlogiston compounds into their base elements with the phlogiston being lost to the air, it is in fact the result of oxygen from the air combining with the base elements to produce oxides. Indeed, one of the first clues that the phlogiston theory was incorrect was that metals gain weight in rusting (when they were supposedly losing phlogiston).

For more information visit:-

https://todayinsci.com/8/8_01.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=oxygen-electrode-cellox-325-15&Id=77440

On this day in science history: the earliest recorded confirmed total solar eclipse occurred

In 709 BC, the earliest record of a confirmed total solar eclipse was written in China. From: Ch'un-ch'iu, book I: "Duke Huan, 3rd year, 7th month, day jen-ch'en, the first day (of the month). The Sun was eclipsed and it was total." This is the earliest direct allusion to a complete obscuration of the Sun in any civilisation. The recorded date, when reduced to the Julian calendar, agrees exactly with that of a computed solar eclipse. Reference to the same eclipse appears in the Han-shu ('History of the Former Han Dynasty') (Chinese, 1st century AD): "...the eclipse threaded centrally through the Sun; above and below it was yellow." Earlier Chinese writings that refer to an eclipse do so without noting totality.

Total Solar Eclipse. I, Luc Viatour [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Having fascinated mankind for years, the Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen (~73%); the rest is mostly helium (~25%), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron.

The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) based on its spectral class. As such, it is informally referred to as a yellow dwarf. It formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core. It is thought that almost all stars form by this process.

The Sun is roughly middle-aged; it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years, and will remain fairly stable for more than another five billion years. After hydrogen fusion in its core has diminished to the point at which it is no longer in hydrostatic equilibrium, the core of the Sun will experience a marked increase in density and temperature while its outer layers expand to eventually become a red giant. It is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury and Venus, and render Earth uninhabitable.

The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, and the Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity. The synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today.

For more information, visit:

https://todayinsci.com/7/7_17.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=iron-1000ppm-for-icp&Id=60140

Solar paint offers endless energy from water vapor

Researchers have developed a solar paint that can absorb water vapour and split it to generate hydrogen - the cleanest source of energy.

The paint contains a newly developed compound that acts like silica gel, which is used in sachets to absorb moisture and keep food, medicines and electronics fresh and dry.

Sun with sunspots and limb darkening as seen in visible light with solar filter. By Geoff Elston [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

But unlike silica gel, the new material, synthetic molybdenum-sulphide, also acts as a semi-conductor and catalyses the splitting of water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

Lead researcher Dr Torben Daeneke, from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, said: "We found that mixing the compound with titanium oxide particles leads to a sunlight-absorbing paint that produces hydrogen fuel from solar energy and moist air.

"Titanium oxide is the white pigment that is already commonly used in wall paint, meaning that the simple addition of the new material can convert a brick wall into energy harvesting and fuel production real estate.

"Our new development has a big range of advantages," he said. "There's no need for clean or filtered water to feed the system. Any place that has water vapour in the air, even remote areas far from water, can produce fuel."

His colleague, Distinguished Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, said hydrogen was the cleanest source of energy and could be used in fuel cells as well as conventional combustion engines as an alternative to fossil fuels.

"This system can also be used in very dry but hot climates near oceans. The sea water is evaporated by the hot sunlight and the vapour can then be absorbed to produce fuel.

"This is an extraordinary concept - making fuel from the sun and water vapour in the air."

For more information visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170614091833.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=silica-gel-granules&Id=58847

A guide to the twenty common amino acids

Have you ever thought about what makes up your body? Only 20 amino acids! Take a look at the graphic below, to discover the structure of each of these, plus information on the notation used to represent them.

Source: Compound Interest. Click to enlarge.

Amino acids are organic compounds containing amine (-NH2) and carboxyl (-COOH) functional groups, along with a side chain (R group) specific to each amino acid. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, although other elements are found in the side chains of certain amino acids. About 500 amino acids are known and can be classified in many ways. They can be classified according to the core structural functional groups' locations as alpha- (α-), beta- (β-), gamma- (γ-) or delta- (δ-) amino acids; other categories relate to polarity, pH level, and side chain group type (aliphatic, acyclic, aromatic, containing hydroxyl or sulfur, etc.). In the form of proteins, amino acid residues form the second-largest component (water is the largest) of human muscles and other tissues. Beyond their role as residues in proteins, amino acids participate in a number of processes such as neurotransmitter transport and biosynthesis.

In biochemistry, amino acids having both the amine and the carboxylic acid groups attached to the first (alpha-) carbon atom have particular importance. They are known as 2-, alpha-, or α-amino acids (generic formula H2NCHRCOOH in most cases, where R is an organic substituent known as a "side chain"); often the term "amino acid" is used to refer specifically to these. They include the 22 proteinogenic ("protein-building") amino acids, which combine into peptide chains ("polypeptides") to form the building-blocks of a vast array of proteins. These are all L-stereoisomers ("left-handed" isomers), although a few D-amino acids ("right-handed") occur in bacterial envelopes, as a neuromodulator (D-serine), and in some antibiotics. 

Twenty of the proteinogenic amino acids are encoded directly by triplet codons in the genetic code and are known as "standard" amino acids. The other two ("non-standard" or "non-canonical") are selenocysteine (present in many noneukaryotes as well as most eukaryotes, but not coded directly by DNA), and pyrrolysine (found only in some archea and one bacterium). Pyrrolysine and selenocysteine are encoded via variant codons; for example, selenocysteine is encoded by stop codon and SECIS element. N-formylmethionine (which is often the initial amino acid of proteins in bacteria, mitochondria, and chloroplasts) is generally considered as a form of methionine rather than as a separate proteinogenic amino acid. Codon–tRNA combinations not found in nature can also be used to "expand" the genetic code and create novel proteins known as alloproteins incorporating non-proteinogenic amino acids.

Many important proteinogenic and non-proteinogenic amino acids have biological functions. For example, in the human brain, glutamate (standard glutamic acid) and gamma-amino-butyric acid ("GABA", non-standard gamma-amino acid) are, respectively, the main excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. Hydroxyproline, a major component of the connective tissue collagen, is synthesised from proline. Glycine is a biosynthetic precursor to porphyrins used in red blood cells. Carnitine is used in lipid transport.

Nine proteinogenic amino acids are called "essential" for humans because they cannot be created from other compounds by the human body and so must be taken in as food. Others may be conditionally essential for certain ages or medical conditions. Essential amino acids may also differ between species.

Because of their biological significance, amino acids are important in nutrition and are commonly used in nutritional supplements, fertilizers, and food technology. Industrial uses include the production of drugs, biodegradable plastics, and chiral catalysts.

For more information visit:-

http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/09/16/aminoacids/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=l-arginine-for-biochemistry&Id=22533

New device produces hydrogen peroxide for water purification

Limited access to clean water is a major issue for billions of people in the developing world, where water sources are often contaminated with urban, industrial and agricultural waste. Many disease-causing organisms and organic pollutants can be quickly removed from water using hydrogen peroxide without leaving any harmful residual chemicals. However, producing and distributing hydrogen peroxide is a challenge in many parts of the world.

Purified drinking water

Now scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have created a small device for hydrogen peroxide production that could be powered by renewable energy sources, like conventional solar panels.

"The idea is to develop an electrochemical cell that generates hydrogen peroxide from oxygen and water on site, and then use that hydrogen peroxide in groundwater to oxidize organic contaminants that are harmful for humans to ingest," said Chris Hahn, a SLAC associate staff scientist.

Their results were reported March 1 in Reaction Chemistry and Engineering.

The project was a collaboration between three research groups at the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, which is jointly run by SLAC and Stanford University.

"Most of the projects here at SUNCAT follow a similar path," said Zhihua (Bill) Chen, a graduate student in the group of Tom Jaramillo, an associate professor at SLAC and Stanford. "They start from predictions based on theory, move to catalyst development and eventually produce a prototype device with a practical application."

In this case, researchers in the theory group led by SLAC/Stanford Professor Jens Nørskov used computational modeling, at the atomic scale, to investigate carbon-based catalysts capable of lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency of hydrogen peroxide production. Their study revealed that most defects in these materials are naturally selective for generating hydrogen peroxide, and some are also highly active. Since defects can be naturally formed in the carbon-based materials during the growth process, the key finding was to make a material with as many defects as possible.

"My previous catalyst for this reaction used platinum, which is too expensive for decentralized water purification," said research engineer Samira Siahrostami. "The beautiful thing about our cheaper carbon-based material is that it has a huge number of defects that are active sites for catalyzing hydrogen peroxide production."

Stanford graduate student Shucheng Chen, who works with Stanford Professor Zhenan Bao, then prepared the carbon catalysts and measured their properties. With the help of SSRL staff scientists Dennis Nordlund and Dimosthenis Sokaras, these catalysts were also characterized using X-rays at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

"We depended on our experiments at SSRL to better understand our material's structure and check that it had the right kinds of defects," Shucheng Chen said.

Finally, he passed the catalyst along to his roommate Bill Chen, who designed, built and tested their device.

"Our device has three compartments," Bill Chen explained. "In the first chamber, oxygen gas flows through the chamber, interfaces with the catalyst made by Shucheng and is reduced into hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide then enters the middle chamber, where it is stored in a solution." In a third chamber, another catalyst converts water into oxygen gas, and the cycle starts over.

Separating the two catalysts with a middle chamber makes the device cheaper, simpler and more robust than separating them with a standard semi-permeable membrane, which can be attacked and degraded by the hydrogen peroxide.

The device can also run on renewable energy sources available in villages. The electrochemical cell is essentially an electrical circuit that operates with a small voltage applied across it. The reaction in chamber one puts electrons into oxygen to make hydrogen peroxide, which is balanced by a counter reaction in chamber three that takes electrons from water to make oxygen - matching the current and completing the circuit. Since the device requires only about 1.7 volts applied between the catalysts, it can run on a battery or two standard solar panels.

The research groups are now working on a higher-capacity device.

Currently the middle chamber holds only about 10 microliters of hydrogen peroxide; they want to make it bigger. They're also trying to continuously circulate the liquid in the middle chamber to rapidly pump hydrogen peroxide out, so the size of the storage chamber no longer limits production.

They would also like to make hydrogen peroxide in higher concentrations. However, only a few milligrams are needed to treat one liter of water, and the current prototype already produces a sufficient concentration, which is one-tenth the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide that you buy at the store for your basic medical needs.

In the long term, the team wants to change the alkaline environment inside the cell to a neutral one that's more like water. This would make it easier for people to use, because the hydrogen peroxide could be mixed with drinking water directly without having to neutralize it first.

The team members are excited about their results and feel they are on the right track to developing a practical device.

"Currently it's just a prototype, but I personally think it will shine in the area of decentralized water purification for the developing world," said Bill Chen. "It's like a magic box. I hope it can become a reality."

For more information, visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170401090435.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=hydrogen-peroxide-6-wv-gpr-rectapur&Id=59163

Dwarf star 200 light years away contains life's building blocks

Many scientists believe the Earth was dry when it first formed, and that the building blocks for life on our planet - carbon, nitrogen and water - appeared only later as a result of collisions with other objects in our solar system that had those elements.

Today, a UCLA-led team of scientists reports that it has discovered the existence of a white dwarf star whose atmosphere is rich in carbon and nitrogen, as well as in oxygen and hydrogen, the components of water. The white dwarf is approximately 200 light years from Earth and is located in the constellation Boötes.

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. By NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Benjamin Zuckerman, a co-author of the research and a UCLA professor of astronomy, said the study presents evidence that the planetary system associated with the white dwarf contains materials that are the basic building blocks for life. And although the study focused on this particular star - known as WD 1425+540 - the fact that its planetary system shares characteristics with our solar system strongly suggests that other planetary systems would also.

"The findings indicate that some of life's important preconditions are common in the universe," Zuckerman said.

The scientists report that a minor planet in the planetary system was orbiting around the white dwarf, and its trajectory was somehow altered, perhaps by the gravitational pull of a planet in the same system. That change caused the minor planet to travel very close to the white dwarf, where the star's strong gravitational field ripped the minor planet apart into gas and dust. Those remnants went into orbit around the white dwarf - much like the rings around Saturn, Zuckerman said - before eventually spiraling onto the star itself, bringing with them the building blocks for life.

The researchers think these events occurred relatively recently, perhaps in the past 100,000 years or so, said Edward Young, another co-author of the study and a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry. They estimate that approximately 30 percent of the minor planet's mass was water and other ices, and approximately 70 percent was rocky material.

The research suggests that the minor planet is the first of what are likely many such analogs to objects in our solar system's Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is an enormous cluster of small bodies like comets and minor planets located in the outer reaches of our solar system, beyond Neptune. Astronomers have long wondered whether other planetary systems have bodies with properties similar to those in the Kuiper belt, and the new study appears to confirm for the first time that one such body exists.

White dwarf stars are dense, burned-out remnants of normal stars. Their strong gravitational pull causes elements like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen to sink out of their atmospheres and into their interiors, where they cannot be detected by telescopes.

The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, describes how WD 1425+540 came to obtain carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. This is the first time a white dwarf with nitrogen has been discovered, and one of only a few known examples of white dwarfs that have been impacted by a rocky body that was rich in water ice.

"If there is water in Kuiper belt-like objects around other stars, as there now appears to be, then when rocky planets form they need not contain life's ingredients," said Siyi Xu, the study's lead author, a postdoctoral scholar at the European Southern Observatory in Germany who earned her doctorate at UCLA.

"Now we're seeing in a planetary system outside our solar system that there are minor planets where water, nitrogen and carbon are present in abundance, as in our solar system's Kuiper belt," Xu said. "If Earth obtained its water, nitrogen and carbon from the impact of such objects, then rocky planets in other planetary systems could also obtain their water, nitrogen and carbon this way."

A rocky planet that forms relatively close to its star would likely be dry, Young said.

"We would like to know whether in other planetary systems Kuiper belts exist with large quantities of water that could be added to otherwise dry planets," he said. "Our research suggests this is likely."

According to Zuckerman, the study doesn't settle the question of whether life in the universe is common.

"First you need an Earth-like world in its size, mass and at the proper distance from a star like our sun," he said, adding that astronomers still haven't found a planet that matches those criteria.

The researchers observed WD 1425+540 with the Keck Telescope in 2008 and 2014, and with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. They analyzed the chemical composition of its atmosphere using an instrument called a spectrometer, which breaks light into wavelengths. Spectrometers can be tuned to the wavelengths at which scientists know a given element emits and absorbs light; scientists can then determine the element's presence by whether it emits or absorbs light of certain characteristic wavelengths. In the new study, the researchers saw the elements in the white dwarf's atmosphere because they absorbed some of the background light from the white dwarf.

For more information visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170209163852.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=carbon-capsule&Id=44459

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

How sand 'holds its breath'

Researchers in Australia have made an important discovery about how sand 'holds its breath' - specifically, how diatoms survive in the ever-changing environmental conditions of a beach. The finding has major implications for the biofuels industry.

Sand. By Siim Sepp (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

The popular Middle Park beach in Melbourne is under the international spotlight following a world-first study by Monash University chemists who have discovered how sand 'holds its breath'.

The discovery, published in Nature Geoscience, has major implications and potential uses in the biofuels industry, according to lead authors Associate Professor Perran Cook and PhD student Michael Bourke from the Water Studies Centre, School of Chemistry.

Sand is full of algae called diatoms, but this environment is mixed about continuously so these organisms might get light one minute then be buried in the sediment with no oxygen the next.

"This is a new mechanism by which this type of algae survive under these conditions," said Associate Professor Cook.

"Our work has found that they ferment, like yeast ferments sugar to alcohol.

"In this case, the products are hydrogen and 'fats', for example, oleate, which is a component of olive oil."

Sand often has high concentrations of algae, which are highly productive and an important food source for food webs in the bay.

It is important to understand how these organisms survive in the harsh environment in which they live.

In this work, scientists present the first study of the importance of anoxic micro-algal metabolism through fermentation in permeable sediments.

They combined flow-through reactor experiments with microbiological approaches to determine the dominant contributors and pathways of dissolved inorganic carbon production in permeable sediments.

They show that micro-algal dark fermentation is the dominant metabolic pathway, which is the first time this has been documented in an environmental setting.

"The finding that hydrogen is a by-product of this metabolism has important implications for the types of bacteria present in the sediment," said Associate Professor Cook.

"It is well known that bacteria in the sediment can 'eat' hydrogen, however, these hydrogen eating bacteria may be more common than we previously thought."

For more information visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161128131328.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=sand-fontainebleau&Id=58829

Why Lithium-ion Batteries Catch Fire

Why have some of Samsung’s phones been catching fire? Check out the infographic below to find out.

Source: Compound Interest 

So, who invented the lithium battery? 

Lithium batteries were proposed by M Stanley Whittingham, now at Binghamton University, while working for Exxon in the 1970s. Whittingham used titanium(IV) sulfide and lithium metal as the electrodes. However, this rechargeable lithium battery could never be made practical. Titanium disulfide was a poor choice, since it has to be synthesized under completely sealed conditions. This is extremely expensive (it cost $1000 per kilo for titanium disulfide raw material in the 1970s).

When exposed to air, titanium disulfide reacts to form hydrogen sulfide compounds, which have an unpleasant odour. For this, and other reasons, Exxon discontinued development of Whittingham's lithium-titanium disulfide battery. Batteries with metallic lithium electrodes presented safety issues, as lithium is a highly reactive element; it burns in normal atmospheric conditions because of the presence of water and oxygen. As a result, research moved to develop batteries where, instead of metallic lithium, only lithium compounds are present, being capable of accepting and releasing lithium ions.

Reversible intercalation in graphite and intercalation into cathodic oxides was discovered in the 1970s by J. O. Besenhard at TU Munich. Besenhard proposed its application in lithium cells. Electrolyte decomposition and solvent co-intercalation into graphite were severe early drawbacks for battery life.

There were two main trends in the research and development of electrode materials for lithium ion rechargeable batteries. One was the approach from the field of electrochemistry centering on graphite intercalation compounds, and the other was the approach from the field of new nano-carbonaceous materials.

History described above is based on the former stand point. On the other hand, in the recent interview article concerning the first stage of scientific research activity directly related to the LIB developments, it is stated that looking at the major streams in research development, the negative-electrode of today’s lithium ion rechargeable battery has its origins in PAS (polyacenic semiconductive material) discovered by Professor Tokio Yamabe and later Shjzukuni Yata at the beginning of 1980’s. The seed of this technology, furthermore, was the discovery of conductive polymers by Professor Hideki Shirakawa and his group, and it could also be seen as having started from the polyacetylene lithium ion battery developed by MacDiarmid and Heeger et al.

For more information visit:-

http://www.compoundchem.com/2016/11/14/li-batteries-cen/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=lithium-1000ppm-for-ic&Id=60354

Methane muted: How did early Earth stay warm?

For at least a billion years of the distant past, planet Earth should have been frozen over but wasn't. Scientists thought they knew why, but a new modeling study from the Alternative Earths team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute has fired the lead actor in that long-accepted scenario.

Humans worry about greenhouse gases, but between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago, microscopic ocean dwellers really needed them. The sun was 10 to 15 percent dimmer than it is today - too weak to warm the planet on its own. Earth required a potent mix of heat-trapping gases to keep the oceans liquid and livable.

For decades, atmospheric scientists cast methane in the leading role. The thinking was that methane, with 34 times the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide, could have reigned supreme for most of the first 3.5 billion years of Earth history, when oxygen was absent initially and little more than a whiff later on. (Nowadays oxygen is one-fifth of the air we breathe, and it destroys methane in a matter of years.)

Full structural formula of the methane molecule

"A proper accounting of biogeochemical cycles in the oceans reveals that methane has a much more powerful foe than oxygen," said Stephanie Olson, a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, a member of the Alternative Earths team and lead author of the new study published September 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "You can't get significant methane out of the ocean once there is sulfate."

Sulfate wasn't a factor until oxygen appeared in the atmosphere and triggered oxidative weathering of rocks on land. The breakdown of minerals such as pyrite produces sulfate, which then flows down rivers to the oceans. Less oxygen means less sulfate, but even 1 percent of the modern abundance is sufficient to kill methane, Olson said.

Olson and her Alternative Earths coauthors, Chris Reinhard, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech University, and Timothy Lyons, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry at UC Riverside, assert that during the billion years they assessed, sulfate in the ocean limited atmospheric methane to only 1 to 10 parts per million - a tiny fraction of the copious 300 parts per million touted by some previous models.

The fatal flaw of those past climate models and their predictions for atmospheric composition, Olson said, is that they ignore what happens in the oceans, where most methane originates as specialized bacteria decompose organic matter.

Seawater sulfate is a problem for methane in two ways: Sulfate destroys methane directly, which limits how much of the gas can escape the oceans and accumulate in the atmosphere. Sulfate also limits the production of methane. Life can extract more energy by reducing sulfate than it can by making methane, so sulfate consumption dominates over methane production in nearly all marine environments.

The numerical model used in this study calculated sulfate reduction, methane production, and a broad array of other biogeochemical cycles in the ocean for the billion years between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago. This model, which divides the ocean into nearly 15,000 three-dimensional regions and calculates the cycles for each region, is by far the highest resolution model ever applied to the ancient Earth. By comparison, other biogeochemical models divide the entire ocean into a two-dimensional grid of no more than five regions.

"Free oxygen [O2] in the atmosphere is required to form a protective layer of ozone [O3], which can shield methane from photochemical destruction," Reinhard said. When the researchers ran their model with the lower oxygen estimates, the ozone shield never formed, leaving the modest puffs of methane that escaped the oceans at the mercy of destructive photochemistry.

With methane demoted, scientists face a serious new challenge to determine the greenhouse cocktail that explains our planet's climate and life story, including a billion years devoid of glaciers, Lyons said. Knowing the right combination other warming agents, such as water vapor, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide, will also help us assess habitability of the hundreds of billions of other Earth-like planets estimated to reside in our galaxy.

"If we detect methane on an exoplanet, it is one of our best candidates as a biosignature, and methane dominates many conversations in the search for life on Mars," Lyons said. "Yet methane almost certainly would not have been detected by an alien civilization looking at our planet a billion years ago - despite the likelihood of its biological production over most of Earth history."

For more information visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161007090659.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=bisdiphenylphosphino-methane-for-sy&Id=38134

Ancient air pockets changing the history of Earth’s oxygen

Ancient air trapped in rock salt for 813 million years is changing the timeline of atmospheric changes and life on Earth.

Defining past atmospheric compositions is an important yet daunting task for geologists. Most methods for determining past Earth surface conditions rely on indirect proxies gleaned from ancient sedimentary rocks. Further complicating matters, sedimentary rocks are notoriously difficult to date because they contain remnants of other rocks formed at various times.

As a result, oxygenation, or the rise of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, has been presumed to occur about 550 million years ago near the boundary between the Precambrian and Paleozoic geologic periods.

The Earth seeen from Apollo 17. By NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

West Virginia University geologist Kathleen Benison is part of a research team using new direct methods to measure the Earth's oxygenation.

The team's study identifies, for the first time, exactly how much oxygen was in Earth's atmosphere 813 million years ago - 10.9 percent. This finding, they say, demonstrates that oxygenation on Earth occurred 300 million years earlier than previously concluded from indirect measurements.

"Diversity of life emerges right around this time period," Benison said. "We used to think that to have diversity of life we needed specific things, including a certain amount of oxygen. (The findings) show that not as much oxygen is required for organisms to develop."

Fluid inclusions, the microscopic bubbles of liquids and gases in rock salt, can contain trapped air. Analysis of this trapped air allows researchers to understand past surface conditions and how oxygen has changed over the course of geologic history.

The team used a quadrupole mass spectrometer to study the air pockets. Carefully crushing minute rock salt crystals released water and gases into the mass spectrometer, which then analyzed for various compounds of oxygen and other gases.

"There are a lot of different environmental conditions specific from the past that we can find occurring in modern samples," Benison said. "This tells us about the range of conditions on Earth and also has implications for Mars."

For more information visit:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160822174234.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=oxygen-sensor&Id=75102

On this day in history - the moon landing goal was announced

In 1961, the formal announcement of an American lunar landing was made by President John F. Kennedy speaking to the Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space program in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” 

Since, a total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting on 20 July 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17. Cernan was the last to step off the lunar surface.

Lunar crater Daedalus on the Moon's far side

All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility.

The atmosphere of the moon

The Moon has an atmosphere so tenuous as to be nearly vacuum, with a total mass of less than 10 metric tons (9.8 long tons; 11 short tons). The surface pressure of this small mass is around 3 × 10−15 atm (0.3 nPa); it varies with the lunar day. Its sources include outgassing and sputtering, the release of atoms from the bombardment of lunar soil by solar wind ions. Elements that have been detected include sodium and potassium, produced by sputtering, which are also found in the atmospheres of Mercury and Io; helium-4 and neon from the solar wind; and argon-40, radon-222, and polonium-210, outgassed after their creation by radioactive decay within the crust and mantle.

The absence of such neutral species (atoms or molecules) as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and magnesium, which are present in the regolith, is not understood. Water vapour has been detected by Chandrayaan-1 and found to vary with latitude, with a maximum at ~60–70 degrees; it is possibly generated from the sublimation of water ice in the regolith. These gases can either return into the regolith due to the Moon's gravity or be lost to space, either through solar radiation pressure or, if they are ionized, by being swept away by the solar wind's magnetic field.

For more information visit:-

http://www.todayinsci.com/5/5_25.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

https://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=ammonia-nitrogen-10ml-set&Id=61457