carbon
Engineers Want to Make Methanol by Pulling Carbon Right Out of the Air
Methanol is one of our most extensively used raw materials. It's used as a solvent, a pesticide, and in combination…
Geoengineering is Shockingly Inexpensive
Despite decades of warnings and international climate agreements, global carbon emissions are still rising. Carbon emissions seem like an unstoppable…
JWST Sees Organic Molecules Ludicrously Far Away
When astronomers used the JWST to look at a galaxy more than 12 billion light years away, they were also…
A New Place to Search for Habitable Planets: “The Soot Line.”
The habitable zone is the region around a star where planets can maintain liquid water on their surface. It's axiomatic…
Warm Carbon Increased Suddenly in the Early Universe. Made by the First Stars?
New research shows that carbon was more abundant in the early Universe than previously thought, a find that could have…
The Raw Materials for Life Form Early on in Stellar Nurseries
Life doesn't appear from nothing. Its origins are wrapped up in the same long, arduous process that creates the elements,…
The Most Devastating Solar Storms in History are Scoured Into Tree Rings
Trees are like sentinels that preserve a record of shifting climates. Their growth rings hold that history and dendrochronology studies…
One of Life’s Building Blocks can Form in Space
Peptides are one of the smallest biomolecules and are one of life's critical building blocks. New research shows that they…
Curiosity Sees a Strong Carbon Signature in a Bed of Rocks
Carbon is critical to life, as far as we know. So anytime we detect a strong carbon signature somewhere like…
White dwarfs are a big source of carbon in the Universe
In their nuclear hearts, stars fuse elements heavier than hydrogen, creating the ingredients necessary to make planets, oceans, and people.…