Photochemistry can be used to separate plutonium and uranium, new research shows. By showing that photochemistry can replace harsh redox agents during actinide separations, the work could benefit nuclear processing facilities and environmental remediation efforts. The redox chemistry of the actinides plays a vital role in the chemistry of separating them. The near overlapping energies […]

On Monday I wrote a quick blogpost on the not insubstantial errors in the description of one of Galileo’s lunar washes posted on the Beinecke Library blog. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised when with a day the description had been heavily edited, romovi9ng all the sections that I had criticised even if no acknowledgement was […]

After three months without a dedicated science minister, the UK government has handed the role to Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani. The appointment comes at a time of deep uncertainty for UK science, with the government having just scrapped its cabinet science committee and continuing doubts surrounding the country’s involvement in Horizon Europe. Ghani has been […]

What won this year’s prize? The 2022 Nobel prize in chemistry is all about a particular type of reaction that can join molecules together quickly and predictably, and which is so precise it can even be used to perform chemical reactions safely inside living cells. It’s called click chemistry – a concept that describes reactions […]

This year’s chemistry Nobel prize is shared equally between the click chemistry pioneers Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal, and Carolyn Bertozzi, who shaped the field of bioorthogonal chemistry. For Sharpless, this is his second chemistry Nobel prize – he’s only the second person after Frederick Sanger to receive two chemistry prizes. ‘I’m absolutely stunned, I’m […]

11.03 Bertozzi is on the line The bioorthogonal chemistry pioneer is talking the chemistry prize committee. It’s the middle of the night where she is and the shock has left her ‘barely able to breathe’ she says. 10.57am: Two wins So Barry Sharpless becomes the fifth person to have won two Nobel prizes. He is […]

9.03am: Women and the Nobel prizes With the Nobel Foundation’s tweet about Marie Curie – the first female winner of a chemistry Nobel prize – it seems like a good time to look at how women are doing when it comes to the prizes. After 2020’s chemistry Nobel prize where two women won, normal service […]

Ethan Siegel is an astrophysicist, but he is better known as a highly successful science populariser, who even has his own Wikipedia page.  He first rose to fame as the author of the blog Starts With a Bang, which he launched in 2008. He expanded his brand, with the publication of popular books on physics. He expanded still […]

A group of chemical companies has developed guidance to help industry calculate the cradle-to-gate emissions of the chemical products it purchases. Together for Sustainability – which includes global players – said the ‘first of its kind’ guideline would harmonise product carbon footprint (PCF) calculation approaches across the industry, to provide quality footprint data that are […]

Three scientists have won the 2022 physics Nobel prize for laying the foundations for quantum computing. Alain Aspect, from the University of Paris-Saclay in France, John Clauser at J F Clauser & Associates in the US and Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna, Austria, share this year’s prize for their pioneering experiments conducted between […]