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First-Ever Look at Exploding Molecules Reveals Their Quantum Secrets

In the quantum world, molecules are always on the move. And for the first time ever, scientists have directly captured these tiny quantum dances in action—and they did so by blowing them up real good. Even at absolute zero, individual particles constantly vibrate without a fixed position, a phenomenon referred to as zero-point motion. In a paper published August 7 in Science, researchers at European XFEL harnessed this behavior for the 2-iodopyridine molecule, which consists of 11 atoms. By bla

Scientists Find Evidence That Original Life on Earth Was Assembled From Material in Space

The molecules that form the building blocks to life may be far more common in space than once thought, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute. Their work, published in The Astrophysical Journal, reports the detection of over a dozen types of complex organic molecules swimming closely around a protostar in the constellation Orion, suggesting that the chemicals can survive the violent processes that give birth to stars and thus may abound in space, instead of having to wait for a

How the Binding of Two Brain Molecules Creates Memories That Last a Lifetime

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. When Todd Sacktor was about to turn 3, his 4-year-old sister died of leukemia. “An empty bedroom next to mine. A swing set with two seats instead of one,” he said, recalling the lingering traces of her presence in the house. “There was this missing person—never spoken of—for which I had only one memory.” That memory, faint but enduring, was set in the downstairs den of their home. A young Sacktor asked his sister to read him a book

Crop signals

Bacteria can be engineered to sense a variety of molecules, such as pollutants or soil nutrients, but usually these signals must be detected microscopically. Now Christopher Voigt, head of MIT’s Department of Bio­logical Engineering, and colleagues have triggered bacterial cells to produce signals that can be read from as far as 90 meters away. Their work could lead to the development of sensors for agricultural and other applications, which could be monitored by drones or satellites. The resea