Scientists may have found a hidden chemical signature that could help reveal alien life.
Category: chemistry
NASA Curiosity rover finds mysterious life linked molecules on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has identified a wide range of organic molecules on Mars, including compounds that scientists consider key ingredients for the origin of life on Earth.
The discovery comes from a chemical experiment carried out on another planet for the first time. Results show that the Martian surface is capable of preserving molecules that could act as potential signs of ancient life. However, the experiment cannot determine whether these organic compounds came from past life on Mars, natural geological processes, or meteorites that struck the planet.
To confirm any true evidence of past life, scientists would need to bring Martian rock samples back to Earth for detailed study.
New recyclable protein textiles could cut microplastic pollution and lower clothing waste
The textile industry produces a substantial portion of the world’s waste, with only about 12% of fiber materials ending up in recycling. Textiles also account for much of the microplastics in oceans. During every wash cycle, synthetic fibers shed microplastics that are flushed down the drain and eventually enter aquatic environments. Increasing textile recycling alone won’t solve this problem because most petrochemical-based fibers are difficult to recycle and continue to release persistent microplastics throughout their life cycle.
Engineers from Washington University in St. Louis may have a solution, thanks to dedicated synthetic biology work in the lab of Fuzhong Zhang, the Francis F. Ahmann Professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and co-director of Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC).
The results of that work, now published in the journal Advanced Materials, created protein-based materials, which are produced in bioreactors (think giant brewing tanks) using genetically engineered microbes. These materials can be readily recycled after use and remade into the same fibers over multiple cycles. In addition, any microparticles, if released from these fibers during washing, would be biodegradable.
Astrophysicists use ‘space archaeology’ to trace the history of a spiral galaxy
Billions of years ago, a young spiral galaxy began to grow in a crowded part of the universe. It pulled in gas and small companion galaxies, slowly building up the bright central region and sweeping spiral arms we see today.
In a new study published in March 2026, my colleagues and I used this galaxy’s chemical fingerprints to reconstruct its life story in detail.
Astronomers want to know how spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be, as these galaxies can give us hints about how the elements we rely on, such as oxygen, were created and spread through space over time.
Scientists Just Found New Evidence of Life on Enceladus
The question Enceladus is asking is whether the transition from chemistry to biology is easy or hard. Whether it is something that happens whenever conditions permit, or whether we are alone in a universe that almost got there but never quite did.
A small, bright moon, five hundred kilometres wide, has become the most precise instrument humanity has ever had for answering that question. And it is answering it in real time, one grain of ice at a time.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Enceladus.
1:28 The Moon Herschel Couldn’t See.
4:46 Cassini and the Plumes.
8:18 The Chemistry Stack.
13:26 The 2025 Reveal: Fresh Organics and a Stable Ocean.
22:40 The Honest Complication.
27:24 What the Ice Grains Are Carrying.
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Fexl Ukraine: / @fexl_ua.
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Sustainable chemistry: Iron substitutes noble metals in catalytic reactions
The production of many products used in everyday life and in industry, such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, and coatings, requires chemical catalysts, often expensive noble metals with limited availability. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are now presenting the first air-stable iron compound, which enables the direct use of iron(I) for catalysis and, unlike previous methods, does not require strong reducing agents. A first test yielded active iron catalysts.
The study, “A Simple, Air Stable Single-Ion Source of Iron(I),” is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Catalysts are required to speed up chemical reactions or even make them possible at all. The catalysts generally used in industry are noble metals, such as rhodium, iridium, or palladium. They are highly effective for many applications, but at the same time expensive and rare.
Ultra-thin membrane enables high-efficiency hydrogen fuel cells for transport and industry
Engineers have developed a new ultra-thin membrane that allows fuel cells to operate more efficiently at high temperatures by enabling proton transport without water, overcoming a key limitation in clean energy technologies.
The breakthrough, reported in Science Advances, could expand the use of fuel cells in transport, heavy industry, and future clean energy systems.
Fuel cells convert chemical energy directly into electricity, producing water and heat as the main by-products. They are already used in hydrogen-powered vehicles, backup power systems for hospitals and data centers, and space missions where lightweight, reliable energy is essential.
A potassium-gated ion channel identified!
Potassium ions (K⁺) are essential for all cells and living organisms. Scientists have long believed that K⁺ merely passes through ion channels and transporters, rather than acting as an extracellular ligand or molecular “switch.” Indeed, there had been no clear evidence that K⁺ functions as a ligand for membrane proteins in animals or plants—until now.
“Unexpectedly, we made this discovery serendipitously while testing the effect of aspartic acid, with K⁺ added as a counter cation, on Alka, an ion channel located in the brain of Drosophila melanogaster,” said the author. “The compound was effective. At first, we thought the effect was due to aspartic acid, but we ultimately realized that it was caused by K⁺, meaning that Alka functions as a membrane receptor that detects extracellular K⁺ as a ligand.”
Ion channel currents in Alka-expressing cells changed significantly in response to K⁺ levels. The researchers combined electrophysiological analysis with AlphaFold3, an AI-based protein structure prediction tool. This allowed them to identify the K⁺-binding site in Alka. This site creates a chemical environment favorable for K⁺, similar to that found in aqueous solution or in the well-known selectivity filter of K⁺ channels.
Quobly Toolbox Explores Quantum Phase Estimation Pipeline With Tensor Networks
An international collaboration between a French quantum startup and a major Taiwanese electronics manufacturer has yielded a new open-source tool for exploring a critical area of quantum computing. Quobly and Taiwan’s Hon Hai Research Institute, the R&D arm of Foxconn, jointly released a numerical toolbox dedicated to the Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE) algorithm, described as a cornerstone of fault-tolerant quantum computing with major applications in quantum chemistry and materials science. While QPE’s theoretical benefits are understood, simulating its practical resource needs has proven difficult; the toolbox aims to bridge this gap by allowing researchers to explore implementations and their implications. The tool focuses on practical, interpretable numerical experiments, enabling full circuit executions for up to 20 qubits and circuits ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 gates on standard laptops.
Quantum Phase Estimation Toolbox for Molecular Systems
While the theoretical underpinnings of QPE are well established, simulating its practical demands has proven a significant hurdle, limiting exploration beyond simplified models. The toolbox addresses this gap by offering a platform for practical, interpretable numerical experiments, allowing scientists to investigate QPE implementations without requiring access to full-scale quantum hardware, which is currently unavailable. Built upon advanced tensor network techniques and the open-source quimb library, the toolbox facilitates the preparation of initial states using DMRG and matrix product states, and allows encoding of molecular Hamiltonians into quantum circuits through methods like trotterization and qubitization. Researchers can directly compare standard QPE with the single-ancilla Robust Phase Estimation (RPE) method, analyzing circuit depth, gate counts, and potential error sources.
Webb discovers one of the universe’s first galaxies
Scientists have discovered a galaxy as it was 13 billion years ago, 800 million years after the Big Bang. It contains possible evidence of the universe’s first stars and is one of the most chemically primitive galaxies observed to date.
The first stars and galaxies are difficult to see because they are so far away and their light is extremely faint. But thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we don’t have to remain in the dark about them. This $10 billion observatory was launched in 2021 and can peer back in time to when the first galaxies and stars were forming.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Kimihiko Nakajima, an astronomer at Kanazawa University, Japan, describes how they used the telescope to study a part of the deep universe and discovered a faint galaxy called LAP1-B. “LAP1-B establishes a ‘fossil in the making,’ a direct high-redshift progenitor of the ancient ultra-faint dwarf galaxies observed in the local universe,” they wrote.