Science Science is Cool.... - Page 107

Fish · 11:19 PM

This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

Post pictures, vidoes, stories, or links. Ask questions. Share science.

Why should I care?:

beach tribe · 03-06-2014, 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

We don't know for sure. We may be on the other side of a collapsed black hole that created the big bang. No one knows.

Infinity is talked about a little in the article that I posted on the last page before this one. A "Steady state" where new matter is created and old matter joins stars so a balance is maintained. Again, no one knows for sure.

30 years ago the accepted astrophysics dogma was that black holes were not real. The way physics and astrophsics has advanced in the last year, I think its only going to be 10 years when before many theories we think now is thrown out.

We have no idea what dark matter is for crissakes.

I'm shocked at how after so many times over of being wrong people will still scoff at the thought of us really not knowing shit about the universe.

beach tribe · 03-06-2014, 12:01 PM

I have come to the conclusion that the "size" of things is really an illusion.

There really is no large or small. Only larger and smaller. I believe that in relation to something our entire universe is really no larger than an atom, and there are probably as many universes as there are stars and so on into infinity.

Fish · 03-06-2014, 12:05 PM

Did you know.....

Oranges aren't always orange.

Oranges in warmer tropical climates never get cold enough to break down the chlorophyll in the fruit’s skin, which means they’ll be yellow or green when they’re ripe. Americans can’t deal with this, so imported oranges get treated with ripening ethylene gas to turn them orange.

Sometimes they're even dyed with Citrus Red 2 for a nice orange color.

Surprisingly, the orange was not named after its color. It was named after its fragrance. The sanskrit root name was naranga, which means fragrant. The English language adopted the word for the color we now know as orange.

Also... packaged orange juice goes through an odd process for storage. Check this out:

In her book, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know about Orange Juice, author Alissa Hamilton details the process that most commercial “natural” and “not from concentrate” orange juice goes through before it hits the grocery store. Hamilton says this type of orange juice is put in aseptic storage, which strips the juice of oxygen “so it doesn’t oxidize in the million gallon tanks in which it can be kept for upwards of a year. When the juice is stripped of oxygen, it’s also stripped of flavor-producing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies…to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it fresh.” Those flavors don’t appear on the label because they’re made from orange byproducts.

**Dave Lane** · 03-06-2014, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beach tribe

I have come to the conclusion that the "size" of things is really an illusion.

There really is no large or small. Only larger and smaller. I believe that in relation to something our entire universe is really no larger than an atom, and there are probably as many universes as there are stars and so on into infinity.

This is actually in some form probably the way it is.

**Dave Lane** · 03-06-2014, 12:14 PM

Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler (http://www.robgendlerastropics.com)

NGC 1999 is a bluish reflection nebula of roughly 0.6 light-year across, located some 1,500 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter). In the middle is a vast, 0.2-light-year-wide hole of empty space represented by a black patch of sky, called “Parsamian 34”.

NGC 1999 is located in a fertile region of low mass star formation. Infrared instruments have detected several young clusters of stars hidden from optical view behind the extensive, dense, reddish dust clouds surrounding NGC 1999.

Just to the left of the black patch is the young, bright star that is illuminating the dust filled, bright bluish reflection nebula. (The spectrum of the star and the nebula are identical which tells us that what we see is truly reflected starlight.) This star is cataloged as V380 Orionis, and its white color is due to its high surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Celsius (nearly twice that of our own Sun). Its mass is estimated to be 3.5 times that of the Sun. The star is so young that it is still surrounded by a cloud of material left over from its formation, here seen as the bluish reflection nebula.

It was previously believed that the black patch (Parsamian 34) was a dense cloud of dust and gas which blocked light that would normally pass through, called a dark nebula. However, analysis of Parsamian 34 by the infrared telescope Herschel (October 9, 2009), which has the capability of penetrating such dense cloud material, resulted in continued black space.

Anyway, with support from ground-based observations done in November and December 2009, it was determined that the patch looks black not because it is an extremely dense pocket of gas, but because it is truly empty. The exact cause of this phenomenon is still being investigated, although astronomers think that the star is launching a bipolar jet at hundreds of kilometers per second that is punching a gigantic hole in the surrounding cloud. Essentially these bolts of gas are probably being shot forward and are sweeping away all the gas and dust.

This composite wide-field image is created by using three data sources: the 8.2 Meter Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), the Hubble Space Telescope, and the color data by the Digitized Sky Survey from Robert Gendler. Image Assembly and Processing is also by Robert Gendler. The image is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive.

**alnorth** · 03-06-2014, 12:39 PM

Today I was wondering how the hell we could know how far away stars are, and when I looked it up, the answer was pretty obvious. There's also a technique involving measuring brightness and color, but for most stars that aren't incredibly far away, we just use basic trigonometry. Measure the angle of a star, wait 6 months for the earth to be on the other side of the sun, measure the angle again, and do the math. Since we know the diameter of our orbit, thats all you really need.

The angle measurements obviously have to be extremely precise because we're talking about something that is ludicrously far away compared to our orbit. After about 400 light years we apparently lack the ability to measure the angle with enough precision to use the simpler trig method.

jiveturkey · 03-06-2014, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alnorth

Today I was wondering how the hell we could know how far away stars are, and when I looked it up, the answer was pretty obvious. There's also a technique involving measuring brightness and color, but for most stars that aren't incredibly far away, we just use basic trigonometry. Measure the angle of a star, wait 6 months for the earth to be on the other side of the sun, measure the angle again, and do the math. Since we know the diameter of our orbit, thats all you really need.

The angle measurements obviously have to be extremely precise because we're talking about something that is ludicrously far away compared to our orbit. After about 400 light years we apparently lack the ability to measure the angle with enough precision to use the simpler trig method.

This kind of reminds me of a dumb friend of mine (not calling you dumb). He asked how fast our planet spins, so I looked it up and we're spinning at 1000mph at the equator, but also moving at 66,000mph around the sun, while our entire solar system is moving at 560,000mph through the galaxy.

He then said "there's no way anyone could know that". So we looked up how this information was ascertained and then he didn't believe that. So I had to explain to him that just because you don't believe or understand how something happens it doesn't change the fact that it's actually happening.

I later told him to look into the inner workings of an automatic transmission just to see if he would be too afraid to drive his car.

**Rausch** · 03-06-2014, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiveturkey

This kind of reminds me of a dumb friend of mine (not calling you dumb). He asked how fast our planet spins, so I looked it up and we're spinning at 1000mph at the equator, but also moving at 66,000mph around the sun, while our entire solar system is moving at 560,000mph through the galaxy.

He then said "there's no way anyone could know that".

Technically, gomer the clod is right.

**Rain Man** · 03-06-2014, 01:11 PM

Astronomy is cool, but there's a little part of me that would find it enjoyable if the Voyager spacecraft eventually hit the big glass sphere in which the stars are imbedded and proved the medieval astronomers right.

**Rausch** · 03-06-2014, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Astronomy is cool, but there's a little part of me that would find it enjoyable if the Voyager spacecraft eventually hit the big glass sphere in which the stars are imbedded and proved the medieval astronomers right.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

T. S. Eliot

**alnorth** · 03-06-2014, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Astronomy is cool, but there's a little part of me that would find it enjoyable if the Voyager spacecraft eventually hit the big glass sphere in which the stars are imbedded and proved the medieval astronomers right.

Thats about as wacky as what the Germans believed during world war 2. A lot of them actually believed that we lived on the inside of a hollow sphere, and they pointed infrared cameras up into the sky to try to spy on the british fleet.

I wonder where they thought the sun went at night.

tooge · 03-06-2014, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Astronomy is cool, but there's a little part of me that would find it enjoyable if the Voyager spacecraft eventually hit the big glass sphere in which the stars are imbedded and proved the medieval astronomers right.

Sort of like the Truman movie

**Dave Lane** · 03-06-2014, 04:55 PM

**Dave Lane** · 03-06-2014, 11:43 PM

jiveturkey · 03-07-2014, 10:54 AM

PLANET SAVED!!!

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/n...ergy-0305.html

New catalyst could lead to cleaner energy
MIT chemists devise a reaction that traps carbon dioxide and turns it into something useful.
Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

This illustration features a new catalyst developed at MIT which consists of a molybdenum atom (yellow) bound to four oxygen atoms (red). This complex, known as molybdate, binds two molecules of carbon dioxide (carbon atoms are gray), which can later be released to create organic compounds.
ILLUSTRATION: JOSE-LUIS OLIVARES/MIT; MOLYBDATE 3-D RENDERING BY LOANA KNOPF

MIT chemists have devised a way to trap carbon dioxide and transform it into useful organic compounds, using a simple metal complex.

More work is needed to understand and optimize the reaction, but one day this approach could offer an easy and inexpensive way to recapture some of the carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles and power plants, says Christopher Cummins, an MIT professor of chemistry and leader of the research team.

“Ideally we’d like to develop carbon-neutral cycles for renewable energy, to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and avoid pollution,” Cummins says. “In addition, since producers of oil have lots of carbon dioxide available to them, companies are interested in using that carbon dioxide as an inexpensive feedstock to make value-added chemicals, including things like polymers.”

The new reaction transforms carbon dioxide into a negatively charged carbonate ion, which can then react with a silicon compound to produce formate, a common starting material for manufacturing useful organic compounds. This process, which the researchers describe in the journal Chemical Science, relies on a very simple molecular ion known as molybdate — an atom of the metal molybdenum bound to four atoms of oxygen.

Scientists have long sought ways to convert carbon dioxide to organic compounds — a process known as carbon fixation. Noble metals such as ruthenium, palladium, and platinum, which are relatively rare, have proven effective catalysts, but their high price makes them less attractive for large-scale industrial use.

As an alternative, chemists have tried to make abundant metals, such as copper and iron, behave more like one of these powerful catalysts by decorating them with molecules that alter their electronic and spatial properties. These molecules, known as ligands, can be very elaborate and usually contain nonmetallic atoms such as sulfur, phosphorus, nitrogen, and oxygen.

With most of those catalysts, the carbon dioxide binds directly to the metal atoms. Cummins was curious to see if he could design a catalyst where the carbon dioxide would bind to the ligand instead. “That would set the stage for chemical transformations of carbon dioxide that might be different from what people had seen before,” he says.

After finding some success with metal complexes consisting of either niobium or titanium bound to ligands consisting of large organic molecules, Cummins decided to try something simpler, without unwieldy ligands. “It occurred to me that there was no reason why these bulky organic ligands would be a requirement for carbon dioxide binding. I wanted to see if we could find something really simple that would exhibit similar reactivity,” he says.

A simple catalyst

Molybdate, which is relatively abundant and stable in air and water, seemed like it could fit the bill. A simple tetrahedron with four atoms of oxygen bound to a central molybdenum atom, molybdate is commonly used as a source of molybdenum, which can catalyze many types of reactions. Until now, no one had studied its interactions with carbon dioxide.

Working with molybdate dissolved in an organic solvent that also contained dissolved carbon dioxide, the researchers found that the ion could bind to not one, but two molecules of carbon dioxide. The first carbon dioxide attaches irreversibly to one of the oxygen atoms bound to molybdenum, creating a carbonate ion.

A second molecule of carbon dioxide then binds to another oxygen atom, but this second binding is reversible, which could enable potential applications in carbon sequestration, Cummins says. In theory, it could allow researchers to create a cartridge that would temporarily store carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles. When the cartridge is full, the carbon dioxide could be removed and transferred to a permanent storage location.

Another possible application would be transforming the carbon dioxide to other useful compounds containing carbon. Cummins and his colleagues showed that the trapped carbon dioxide could be converted to formate by treating silicon-containing compounds called silanes with the molybdate complex.

“This is a really elegant addition to the carbon dioxide fixation literature because it shows that some really beautiful transformations are achievable without an elaborate ligand system,” says Christine Thomas, an associate professor of chemistry at Brandeis University who was not involved in the research.

More research is needed before the reaction can become industrially useful, Cummins says. In particular, his lab is investigating ways to perform the reaction so that molybdate is regenerated at the end, allowing it to catalyze another reaction.

“The big advance of the present work is just showing that molybdate takes up carbon dioxide in the way that it does, and illustrating in detail the structures that are produced by addition of carbon dioxide to molybdate,” Cummins says. “Hopefully it’s going to be a little bit thought-provoking and cause people to take a step back and consider just what we’re going to need to do.”

The paper’s lead author is graduate student Ioana Knopf; other authors are former visiting student Takashi Ono, former postdoc Manuel Temprado, and recent PhD recipient Daniel Tofan. The research was funded by the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation; the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; and the National Science Foundation.

05-21-2012, 09:43 PM
Fish Ain't no relax! Join Date: Sep 2005 Casino cash: $358919	Science is Cool.... This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice. Post pictures, vidoes, stories, or links. Ask questions. Share science. Why should I care?: Last edited by Fish; 05-05-2021 at 11:19 PM..
Posts: 48,441

03-06-2014, 12:01 PM	#1592
beach tribe Keep doubting J MFing Houston Join Date: May 2007 Location: ft.lauderdale Casino cash: $4388036	I have come to the conclusion that the "size" of things is really an illusion. There really is no large or small. Only larger and smaller. I believe that in relation to something our entire universe is really no larger than an atom, and there are probably as many universes as there are stars and so on into infinity.
Posts: 21,429

03-06-2014, 12:05 PM	#1593
Fish Ain't no relax! Join Date: Sep 2005 Casino cash: $358919	Did you know..... Oranges aren't always orange. Oranges in warmer tropical climates never get cold enough to break down the chlorophyll in the fruit’s skin, which means they’ll be yellow or green when they’re ripe. Americans can’t deal with this, so imported oranges get treated with ripening ethylene gas to turn them orange. Sometimes they're even dyed with Citrus Red 2 for a nice orange color. Surprisingly, the orange was not named after its color. It was named after its fragrance. The sanskrit root name was naranga, which means fragrant. The English language adopted the word for the color we now know as orange. Also... packaged orange juice goes through an odd process for storage. Check this out: In her book, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know about Orange Juice, author Alissa Hamilton details the process that most commercial “natural” and “not from concentrate” orange juice goes through before it hits the grocery store. Hamilton says this type of orange juice is put in aseptic storage, which strips the juice of oxygen “so it doesn’t oxidize in the million gallon tanks in which it can be kept for upwards of a year. When the juice is stripped of oxygen, it’s also stripped of flavor-producing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies…to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it fresh.” Those flavors don’t appear on the label because they’re made from orange byproducts. __________________
Posts: 48,441

03-06-2014, 12:14 PM	#1595
Dave Lane Space Cadet and Aczabel Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Kanab, UT, USA Casino cash: $9333275 VARSITY	Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler (http://www.robgendlerastropics.com) NGC 1999 is a bluish reflection nebula of roughly 0.6 light-year across, located some 1,500 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter). In the middle is a vast, 0.2-light-year-wide hole of empty space represented by a black patch of sky, called “Parsamian 34”. NGC 1999 is located in a fertile region of low mass star formation. Infrared instruments have detected several young clusters of stars hidden from optical view behind the extensive, dense, reddish dust clouds surrounding NGC 1999. Just to the left of the black patch is the young, bright star that is illuminating the dust filled, bright bluish reflection nebula. (The spectrum of the star and the nebula are identical which tells us that what we see is truly reflected starlight.) This star is cataloged as V380 Orionis, and its white color is due to its high surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Celsius (nearly twice that of our own Sun). Its mass is estimated to be 3.5 times that of the Sun. The star is so young that it is still surrounded by a cloud of material left over from its formation, here seen as the bluish reflection nebula. It was previously believed that the black patch (Parsamian 34) was a dense cloud of dust and gas which blocked light that would normally pass through, called a dark nebula. However, analysis of Parsamian 34 by the infrared telescope Herschel (October 9, 2009), which has the capability of penetrating such dense cloud material, resulted in continued black space. Anyway, with support from ground-based observations done in November and December 2009, it was determined that the patch looks black not because it is an extremely dense pocket of gas, but because it is truly empty. The exact cause of this phenomenon is still being investigated, although astronomers think that the star is launching a bipolar jet at hundreds of kilometers per second that is punching a gigantic hole in the surrounding cloud. Essentially these bolts of gas are probably being shot forward and are sweeping away all the gas and dust. This composite wide-field image is created by using three data sources: the 8.2 Meter Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), the Hubble Space Telescope, and the color data by the Digitized Sky Survey from Robert Gendler. Image Assembly and Processing is also by Robert Gendler. The image is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive. __________________ Thanks, Trump for the civics lesson. We are learning so much about RICO, espionage, sedition, impeachment, the 25th Amendment, order of succession, nepotism, separation of powers, 1st Amendment, obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest, collusion, sanctions, oligarchs, money laundering and so much more.
Posts: 40,584

03-06-2014, 12:39 PM	#1596
alnorth . Join Date: Dec 2002 Casino cash: $57156239	Today I was wondering how the hell we could know how far away stars are, and when I looked it up, the answer was pretty obvious. There's also a technique involving measuring brightness and color, but for most stars that aren't incredibly far away, we just use basic trigonometry. Measure the angle of a star, wait 6 months for the earth to be on the other side of the sun, measure the angle again, and do the math. Since we know the diameter of our orbit, thats all you really need. The angle measurements obviously have to be extremely precise because we're talking about something that is ludicrously far away compared to our orbit. After about 400 light years we apparently lack the ability to measure the angle with enough precision to use the simpler trig method. __________________ how many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb? HOW MANY?! none they just sit in the dark and cry Last edited by alnorth; 03-06-2014 at 12:46 PM..
Posts: 36,130

03-06-2014, 01:11 PM	#1599
Rain Man Seize life. Be an ermine. Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: My house Casino cash: $1368491 VARSITY	Astronomy is cool, but there's a little part of me that would find it enjoyable if the Voyager spacecraft eventually hit the big glass sphere in which the stars are imbedded and proved the medieval astronomers right. __________________ Active fan of the greatest team in NFL history.
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03-06-2014, 04:55 PM	#1603
Dave Lane Space Cadet and Aczabel Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Kanab, UT, USA Casino cash: $9333275 VARSITY	__________________ Thanks, Trump for the civics lesson. We are learning so much about RICO, espionage, sedition, impeachment, the 25th Amendment, order of succession, nepotism, separation of powers, 1st Amendment, obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest, collusion, sanctions, oligarchs, money laundering and so much more.
Posts: 40,584

03-06-2014, 11:43 PM	#1604
Dave Lane Space Cadet and Aczabel Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Kanab, UT, USA Casino cash: $9333275 VARSITY	. Attached Thumbnails __________________ Thanks, Trump for the civics lesson. We are learning so much about RICO, espionage, sedition, impeachment, the 25th Amendment, order of succession, nepotism, separation of powers, 1st Amendment, obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest, collusion, sanctions, oligarchs, money laundering and so much more.
Posts: 40,584

03-07-2014, 10:54 AM	#1605
jiveturkey Captain Kick Ass Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Kansas Casino cash: $9305197	PLANET SAVED!!! http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/n...ergy-0305.html New catalyst could lead to cleaner energy MIT chemists devise a reaction that traps carbon dioxide and turns it into something useful. Anne Trafton, MIT News Office This illustration features a new catalyst developed at MIT which consists of a molybdenum atom (yellow) bound to four oxygen atoms (red). This complex, known as molybdate, binds two molecules of carbon dioxide (carbon atoms are gray), which can later be released to create organic compounds. ILLUSTRATION: JOSE-LUIS OLIVARES/MIT; MOLYBDATE 3-D RENDERING BY LOANA KNOPF MIT chemists have devised a way to trap carbon dioxide and transform it into useful organic compounds, using a simple metal complex. More work is needed to understand and optimize the reaction, but one day this approach could offer an easy and inexpensive way to recapture some of the carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles and power plants, says Christopher Cummins, an MIT professor of chemistry and leader of the research team. “Ideally we’d like to develop carbon-neutral cycles for renewable energy, to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and avoid pollution,” Cummins says. “In addition, since producers of oil have lots of carbon dioxide available to them, companies are interested in using that carbon dioxide as an inexpensive feedstock to make value-added chemicals, including things like polymers.” The new reaction transforms carbon dioxide into a negatively charged carbonate ion, which can then react with a silicon compound to produce formate, a common starting material for manufacturing useful organic compounds. This process, which the researchers describe in the journal Chemical Science, relies on a very simple molecular ion known as molybdate — an atom of the metal molybdenum bound to four atoms of oxygen. Scientists have long sought ways to convert carbon dioxide to organic compounds — a process known as carbon fixation. Noble metals such as ruthenium, palladium, and platinum, which are relatively rare, have proven effective catalysts, but their high price makes them less attractive for large-scale industrial use. As an alternative, chemists have tried to make abundant metals, such as copper and iron, behave more like one of these powerful catalysts by decorating them with molecules that alter their electronic and spatial properties. These molecules, known as ligands, can be very elaborate and usually contain nonmetallic atoms such as sulfur, phosphorus, nitrogen, and oxygen. With most of those catalysts, the carbon dioxide binds directly to the metal atoms. Cummins was curious to see if he could design a catalyst where the carbon dioxide would bind to the ligand instead. “That would set the stage for chemical transformations of carbon dioxide that might be different from what people had seen before,” he says. After finding some success with metal complexes consisting of either niobium or titanium bound to ligands consisting of large organic molecules, Cummins decided to try something simpler, without unwieldy ligands. “It occurred to me that there was no reason why these bulky organic ligands would be a requirement for carbon dioxide binding. I wanted to see if we could find something really simple that would exhibit similar reactivity,” he says. A simple catalyst Molybdate, which is relatively abundant and stable in air and water, seemed like it could fit the bill. A simple tetrahedron with four atoms of oxygen bound to a central molybdenum atom, molybdate is commonly used as a source of molybdenum, which can catalyze many types of reactions. Until now, no one had studied its interactions with carbon dioxide. Working with molybdate dissolved in an organic solvent that also contained dissolved carbon dioxide, the researchers found that the ion could bind to not one, but two molecules of carbon dioxide. The first carbon dioxide attaches irreversibly to one of the oxygen atoms bound to molybdenum, creating a carbonate ion. A second molecule of carbon dioxide then binds to another oxygen atom, but this second binding is reversible, which could enable potential applications in carbon sequestration, Cummins says. In theory, it could allow researchers to create a cartridge that would temporarily store carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles. When the cartridge is full, the carbon dioxide could be removed and transferred to a permanent storage location. Another possible application would be transforming the carbon dioxide to other useful compounds containing carbon. Cummins and his colleagues showed that the trapped carbon dioxide could be converted to formate by treating silicon-containing compounds called silanes with the molybdate complex. “This is a really elegant addition to the carbon dioxide fixation literature because it shows that some really beautiful transformations are achievable without an elaborate ligand system,” says Christine Thomas, an associate professor of chemistry at Brandeis University who was not involved in the research. More research is needed before the reaction can become industrially useful, Cummins says. In particular, his lab is investigating ways to perform the reaction so that molybdate is regenerated at the end, allowing it to catalyze another reaction. “The big advance of the present work is just showing that molybdate takes up carbon dioxide in the way that it does, and illustrating in detail the structures that are produced by addition of carbon dioxide to molybdate,” Cummins says. “Hopefully it’s going to be a little bit thought-provoking and cause people to take a step back and consider just what we’re going to need to do.” The paper’s lead author is graduate student Ioana Knopf; other authors are former visiting student Takashi Ono, former postdoc Manuel Temprado, and recent PhD recipient Daniel Tofan. The research was funded by the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation; the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; and the National Science Foundation.
Posts: 5,781