Recycling biotechnology byproducts can enhance soil health while reducing carbon emissions and maintaining crop yields.
Environment
1 hour ago
0
0
Greenhouse gas emissions released directly from the movement of volcanic rocks are capable of creating massive global warming effects—a discovery which could transform the way scientists predict climate change, a new study ...
Earth Sciences
13 hours ago
1
509
Every chemical, from the simplest to the most complex, have a structural skeleton of atoms. The atoms can be added or removed to transform the chemical into different types, for use in different applications. For many pharmaceutical ...
Materials Science
6 hours ago
0
9
Natural gas and crude oil locked away inside layers of shale, a type of sedimentary rock, is one of the nation's largest and fastest growing energy sources. According to Drew Pomerantz, a scientist at Schlumberger, an oilfield ...
Analytical Chemistry
8 hours ago
0
5
The burgeoning bioenergy sector must peak and decline in the next 30 years to alleviate extreme pressure on land, warns researchers in a new analysis published today in Global Change Biology. They assert that projections ...
Environment
13 hours ago
1
51
On a cold afternoon in late November, Jan Gerrit Otterpohl eyes the chimneys of Berlin's Heizkraftwerk Mitte, a state-of-the-art power plant that supplies the city with heat and electricity. It's not the billowing steam he's ...
Environment
13 hours ago
0
4
With 2019 on pace as one of the warmest years on record, a major new study from the University of California, Davis, reveals how rapidly the Arctic is warming and examines global consequences of continued polar warming.
Environment
Dec 04, 2019
4
166
Global carbon emissions boosted by soaring natural gas use are set to hit record levels in 2019 despite a decline in coal consumption and a string of countries declaring a climate emergency, researchers said Wednesday.
Environment
Dec 04, 2019
2
32
A new study from Swansea University has given new insights into how the greenhouse gas methane is being produced in the surface waters of lakes, which should signal a rethink on the global methane cycle.
Environment
Dec 04, 2019
1
116
An international team of scientists led by the University of Arizona used the latest technology in remote sensing to measure plant biodiversity from the Amazon basin to the Andes Mountains in Peru to better understand how ...
Environment
Dec 04, 2019
0
32
Carbon (pronounced /ˈkɑrbən/) is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of about 5730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. The name "carbon" comes from Latin language carbo, coal, and, in some Romance and Slavic languages, the word carbon can refer both to the element and to coal.
There are several allotropes of carbon of which the best known are graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form. For example, diamond is highly transparent, while graphite is opaque and black. Diamond is among the hardest materials known, while graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper (hence its name, from the Greek word "to write"). Diamond has a very low electrical conductivity, while graphite is a very good conductor. Under normal conditions, diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of all known materials. All the allotropic forms are solids under normal conditions but graphite is the most thermodynamically stable.
All forms of carbon are highly stable, requiring high temperature to react even with oxygen. The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and other transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil and methane clathrates. Carbon forms more compounds than any other element, with almost ten million pure organic compounds described to date, which in turn are a tiny fraction of such compounds that are theoretically possible under standard conditions.
Carbon is one of the least abundant elements in the Earth's crust, but the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
