The age of the Earth's inner core revised

By creating conditions akin to the center of the Earth inside a laboratory chamber, researchers have improved the estimate of the age of our planet's solid inner core, putting it at 1 billion to 1.3 billion years old.

Liquid sulfur changes shape and goes critical under pressure

Scientists from the ESRF, together with teams from CEA and CNRS/Sorbonne Université, have found the proof for a liquid-to-liquid transition in sulfur and of a new kind of critical point ending this transition. Their work ...

Compressive shearing may start life on other planets

Massive compressive shearing forces generated by the tidal pull of Jupiter-like planets on their rocky ice-covered moons may form a natural reactor that drives simple amino acids to polymerize into larger compounds. These ...

How to teach gold to tell left from right

Nanometer-sized gold particles consisting of only a few atoms can be used as catalysts for important chemical reactions. Noelia Barrabés from the Institute of Materials Chemistry at TU Wien has been researching new methods ...

Order out of disorder in ice

The glass structure of a material is often believed to mimic its corresponding liquid. Polyamorphism between ices has been used as a guide to elucidate the properties of liquid water. But how many forms of amorphous ices ...

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