Attached is the media release approved by Dr. Martin Schmieder titled ‘ Impact Craters – The Incubators of Life’
Dr. Schmieder was the very first researcher to accurately measure the cooling rates of impact craters and therefore was the first researcher to find that impact craters could be our planet’s analogue to Darwin’s warm, little pond – necessary for evolution. It’s truly groundbreaking research – for more information I urge you to read the following media release:
Picric acid sounds like something out of Harry Potter – and it’s original concoction is the stuff of legend. Picric acid was more explosive than TNT.
Johann Rudolf Glauber first proposed pycric acid in 1742. It was first made from animal horn, silk, indigo and a resin using a recipe that looked almost identical to the ingredients necessary to bring Voldemort his body again.
The military caught wind of this chemical and found that it was highly effective in artillery as it was shock proof. Previous explosives like nitroglycerine would sometimes detonate in the artillery barrel which wasn’t a happy ending for anyone. The British, French and Japanese started toying around with it and it formed the basis for the following boomers:
– Explosive D (US)
– Lyddite (GBR)
-Shimose powder (JAP)
– Ecrasite (AUSTRIA)
– Melinite (FRA)
Why was it so dangerous?
Over time water evaporates from the substance leaving crystalline salts behind. These acid crystals are highly volatile and explode readily under friction or a change in temperature. The crystals react with metals and alkaline materials very easily, such as contrete, to form an explosive picrate salt – this particular salt caused booms that were bigger than TNT.
Picric Acid; Image credit to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
The sensitivity of picrate acids comes from the NO2 groups on the main body (similar to TNT) – under a reaction they combust releasing a significant amount of heat and energy. Here’s a video to see what can happen:
Why are galaxies red? This is due to one element and only one – Hydrogen.
Hydrogen is nature’s smallest element and is, perhaps, the purest representation of what an atom actually is. The name Hydrogen actually comes from Greek words ‘hydro’ and ‘gen’ – which when put together mean “water-generator”.
Hydrogen was extensively studied by scientists such as Niels Bohr. Bohr’s simple atomic model had an electron orbiting a proton, just like in the diagram shown above. This is analogous to the Earth orbiting around the Sun. However the Bohr model is highly simplistic as quantum mechanics tells us that we never quite know exactly where the electron is.
Hydrogen also has very specific energy “shelves” where electrons are allowed to be. Despite the short comings of Bohr’s model the energy levels of these shelves can be calculated very accurately from the model.
So, in order to move an electron from one shelf to the next we need a very specific amount of energy. This is due to the discretization of angular momentum which meant an electron in the Bohr model could only exist at certain distances from the proton. If you give the atom more energy the electron will jump up to a higher shelf – at this point it’s in an excited state.
If you let it sit there it will re-emit energy in the form of light and the electron will jump back down to a lower shelf. Now, if an electron jumps from the 3rd shelf to the 2nd shelf the electron emits visible light. This emission is so powerful that it can be seen throughout many galaxies:
It’s THAT emission that causes the glowing red lines in the galaxy shown above. In the case of the galaxy shown above (where in a previous blog post we looked at where its unusual shape came from) the clear red lines are where the galaxy is forming stars. This red glow from Hydrogen shows us very clearly where stars are being formed in the night sky.
So there you have it. These red lines splashed across the night sky are a visible sign that new stars are born and shows how hydrogen can make a galaxy glow a deep red.
Dr. Mike Gunson is a NASA specialist in atmospheric chemistry, composition and how they relate to climate change. He is the project scientist for NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory
(OCO).
Image Credit: http://climate.nasa.gov/system/image_uploads/main/Michael_Gunson.jpg
His response to a very, very important question is italicised.
A common question, asked by many people, I know is:
When atmospheric carbon dioxide samples are collected surely natural occurrences affect the collection? How do we know how much is human-caused?
Very good point! Single measurements of CO2 concentrations can’t tell you where it comes from (It could be natural or anthropogenic). In 1957 scientists interested in the composition of the atmosphere took air samples in “clean” sites to eliminate any rapid variation in concentration that could occur near a carbon source. This record shows the long-term increase and accumulation of CO2 due to fossil fuel consumption but not much more than that.
A New Way of Tracking CO2 Emissions – Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO 2)
CO2 measurements close to cities are affected by a number of patterns such as traffic, factory shut-down/start-up and even the time of day (peak hour traffic and air conditioner use contributes significantly to CO2 emission).
Scientist’s interested in quantifying the actual impact fossil-fuel consumption need to be able to accurately measure the composition of atmosphere free from disturbance. The objective of OCO 2 is to provide space-based observations for atmospheric CO2.
Through OCO 2 NASA scientists can quantify both human activities and natural processes that influence the distribution of greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. NASA originally tried to launch the project in 2009 however a covering that protects the satellitle failed to separate from the spacecraft.
Image credit: http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/13/2/26/oco2.jpg
The satellite would have been able to take the most precise measurements of atmospheric CO2 ever from space. From these measurements NASA could quantify the amount and distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere. From that information global models, similar to those used for weather prediction, could be used to pin-point the sources of those emissions and the locations of any sinks (where CO2 collects) on the Earth’s surface.
Today we’re looking at a bag of fun known as chlorine azide. Chlorine azide was highly reactive, toxic and unstable – it was only really useful for figuring out what would blow up first if you opened a jar of it.
What happened to every chemist that tried to play with it …
[Image courtesy of http://hqwide.com/death-dark-gray-chemistry-background-chemicals-blackboard-wallpaper-46976/]
No, seriously, that’s why they’re used. Their essential character is to make stuff around them change. Never put something next to a jar of Chlorine azide that you’re not comfortable seeing re-arranged in a suddenly violent fashion. The real challenge with this compound is finding something it WONT react with violently.
An excerpt from the 1943 JACS article on chlorine azide:
Owing to the extreme instability of the compound accurate determinations of the boiling and melting points have not been made as yet. Numerous explosions, often without cause, have occurred during experiments.
Wikipedia describes it in a similarly fun way:
‘It usually detonates violently, whatever the temperature, without apparent provocation’
What’s interesting to note is its brother, Sodium Azide, saves lives every single year – particularly throuhg its use in older air bags in cars.
Why is it so dangerous?
A lovely molecule of chlorine azide – it’s the green bond you want to worry about ….
[Image courtesy of ChemNet http://www.chemnet.com/cas/en/13973-88-1/CHLORINE-AZIDE.html]
Chlorine Azide – it’s that green single bond that is the reason why this little man will blow up without provocation
A strongly, electronegative, chlorine is bonded with a very, very fragile single bond to a triple bond in the nitrogen compound. End of days occurs when the chlorine wants to find a new partner. Because this single bond is very, very fragile, all it takes is a partial electropositive charge on a neighbouring atom or molecule to break the Cl-N bond. The chlorine lovingly elects to take the rest of the compound with it. It’s like a trip-wired explosive. Because of this charmingly violent feature, it has little use in the lab other than to investigate substances and find out how on Earth you can stop this from happening.
The False Vacuum! 