Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two electrons that are emitted from a large molecule by a single photon may originate from far apart within that molecule. In a recent study on hydrocarbon molecules consisting of one to five fused benzene rings (each ring consisting of six carbon atoms), Synchrotron Radiation Center researchers Tim Hartman and Ralf Wehlitz have found that the relative probability for ejecting two electrons scales linearly with the length of the molecule.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two electrons that are emitted from a large molecule by a single photon may originate from far apart within that molecule. In a recent study on hydrocarbon molecules consisting of one to five fused benzene rings (each ring consisting of six carbon atoms), Synchrotron Radiation Center researchers Tim Hartman and Ralf Wehlitz have found that the relative probability for ejecting two electrons scales linearly with the length of the molecule.

Plants mastered chemistry a long time before humans, billions of years actually . In fact, we humans and most of the rest of the life on Earth can thank tiny cyanobacteria for mastering/evolving the molecule known as chlorophyll. Chlorophyll--a pigment that absorbs blue light--is the key to photosynthesis, and photosynthesis is the key to turning sunlight into food.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Knowing the structure of a molecule is an important part of understanding it, but quite often it’s even more important to know how the molecule moves -- more specifically, the vibrational dynamics that drive and control its interactions with other molecules in chemical reactions. That’s particularly true of proteins, the enormously complex molecular structures found at the heart of important life processes such as cell signaling, ion transport, and other functions. But most of the available techniques for studying the vibrational properties of a protein run into some vexing limitations, especially when probing the lower frequencies at which the proteins actually do their job.

A first of its kind combination of experiment and simulation at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing a close-up look at the molecule that complicates next-generation biofuels.

The sweet smell of benzene gave birth to the term ‘aromatic’ molecules, but it is the chemical bonds within these compounds that have fascinated researchers for almost 200 years. Encasing alternating double- and single-bonded carbon atoms inside a flat ring allows so-called ‘pi’-electrons to delocalize and move around the cyclic framework. And thanks to the curious rules of quantum mechanics, this pi-electron sharing has radical consequences for differently sized rings.