Water into Gold? Not exactly...
Electron transfer makes a water droplet metallic! Source: Philip E. Mason
A new study from Nature explains how scientists used sodium and potassium to make water metallic. By transferring electrons from the alkali metals to the water, a team was able to condense the water into a golden metallic material, if only for a few moments. It's not exactly what the alchemists had in mind, but it is a pretty amazing discovery especially considering they weren't certain it would work at all! You can check out the article in Nature here.
Cool Things!
The Fish That Didn't Stay Extinct: The Story of the Coelacanth
The Coelacanth was a prehistoric fish that thrived in the waters of the Devonian period, over 400...
Homo Erectus: the First European
Stone tools found at Korolevo
Stone tools can tell us a lot, but perhaps most importantly, these...
Take a Leap this Leap Day!
Sunrise in Dülmen, Germany by Dietmar Rabich
Today is leap day, an extra day that occurs every fo...
Specimen Deep Dives
Crossing the Thames: the Many London Bridges
The London Bridge has been an iconic structure in film, literature, and nursery rhyme, but the br...
Where Did the Moon Come From?
So much of what we know about distant space is a mystery, but even our closest cosmic neighbor re...
Libyan Desert Glass: The Rock of God
Scattered among the Sahara’s billowing dunes, hidden amongst the grains of sand, lie small glassy...
Long Form Articles
How the Dinosaurs Got their Feathers
66 million years ago, the K/PG extinction event brought the Age of Dinosaurs to a violent end. Ho...
Paleoart: Bringing the Past to Life
What do you see when you imagine a dinosaur? Whatever image springs to mind owes itself to the wo...
The Apple II: the Revolutionary Personal Computer
The history of modern computing is a long road that stretches from the earliest computers that co...