In 1962, an underground fire started in the coal-mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. That fire is still burning 53 years later.
Produced by Elaine Seward. Written by Sam Kean. Executive Produced by Adam Dylewski.
Video courtesy of the American Chemical Society
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A new substance, unlike any on Earth, could have one of the highest melting points we've ever seen, theoretically withstanding temperatures of more than 7,460 degrees Fahrenheit.
To put that into perspective, this is about 180F warmer than the liquid iron and nickel outer core of Earth, about 2/3 the temperature of the surface of the sun, and almost 360F higher than the current record holder of the highest experimentally-recorded melting point — the temperature at which a substance turns from a solid into a liquid.
That is, however, if the team can successfully synthesize it. There is no other compound like this on Earth, and it doesn't occur naturally, study researcher Axel van de Walle, of Brown University, told Tech Insider in an email.
These types of materials are tricky to study in a lab given that, well, you'd have to replicate mind-bogglingly scorching temperatures — think surface of the sun hot — to understand their heat-resistant properties. So scientists rely on computers to simulate what would happen to different combinations of substances under a variety of conditions.
By taking a page from the current record holder of the highest experimentally-recorded melting point, a mixture of the three elements hafnium, tantalum, and carbon, the team figured that they could find an even better atomical arrangement to make a more heat-resistant substance.
After analyzing the record-holder's quantum mechanical properties, the team probed other compounds that might have the same but possibly stronger heat-resistant capabilities.
And they found such a substance— or more accurately, they found an optimal arrangement — made of the following elements: hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon.
While nitrogen and carbon are common and abundant on our planet, the lesser-known element hafnium — the shiny, silver metal that was discovered in 1923— is the 45th most abundant element in Earth's crust.
"It's not common enough to make cars out of it, but common enough for specialized aerospace applications," van de Walle told us. "It's 100 times cheaper than gold."
If their powerful computational approach checks out, this substance would shatter the current world record by 360F.
"Melting point is a really difficult prediction problem compared to what has been done before," co-author Axel van de Walle said in a press release. "For the modeling community, I think that's what is special about this."
The team and their other collaborators have secured the resources to begin making the substance — the next step in the process. They hope to make something within the next year or so, van de Walle told Tech Insider.
And its applications could be endless — from heat shields on hypersonic vehicles to coatings for jet engines.
This type of work in general could contribute to a new class of high-performance materials, though it's not clear whether the compound itself will be a useful material, according to a press release.
But as for now, it won't get us set on a journey to the sun. But we can still dream.
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NOW WATCH: Here's what we know about the new 'Earth' — a planet that could support life
Humidity is rising and thermometers are creeping into the triple digits — all signs that summer is here.
Between pool parties and delicious cold brews, millions of people are firing up their grills and throwing on tenderloins, flank steaks, pork shoulder and many more combinations of savory meats to celebrate summer.
But what actually happens to the meat when it hits high heat that makes it so mouthwatering?
The video below, from our friends at the American Chemical Society, explains the delicious chemical reactions that transform a bloody chunk of meat into a tasty browned steak.
A common misconception is that the red color of meat comes from blood, but the muscle's ruby red hue actually stems from the animal's behavior. Cows spend a ton of time standing, so their muscles must be able to withstand their weight for long stretches of time without fatiguing.
This creates lots of slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are more efficient at consuming oxygen and transforming it into energy because they contain more of a special protein called myoglobin, which turns red when it's bound to oxygen. The more myoglobin a piece of meat has, the redder it will be.
The same thing happens in the muscles of people who engage in endurance sports, like marathons and long-distance swimming.
If a package of meat appears grayish, the video explains, it just means that the meat's myoglobin isn't attached to oxygen. When you open the package and re-expose the meat to air, the surface of the meat will regain its ruby tint.
Eventually, however, oxygen-exposed meat will turn back to gray — a sign that it's gone bad.
To side-step this, many grocery stores package their meat under carbon monoxide — the carbon monoxide stops the oxygen from reacting with the muscle over time, keeping it red.
To perfect that barbecue flavor, you need some charcoal. While gas is convenient, it totally misses the mark in terms of good barbecue.
Many people don't realize that charcoal is actually wood that's been heated in the absence of oxygen. Wood chips contain a chemical compound called lignin which, when fired up, gets broken down and produces another compound called guaiacol. The guaiacol in the charcoal is what then produces that deep, smokey wood fired flavor.
And if that isn't enough, when juices from the meat drip onto the charcoal, they produce even more delicious-tasting compounds that float upwards and saturate the meat with even more flavor.
The heat of the grill also changes that myoglobin — above 140 Fahrenheit, the molecule unfolds to the point where it can't hold onto oxygen and turns a tan color due to a compound called hemichrome. At about 170 Fahrenheit, myoglobin unfolds again into a new structure called metmyoglobin, which looks a darker grayish brown.
But the "holy grail of all culinary chemical reactions," according to the video, is when the Maillard reaction rearranges the amino acids and sugars in the muscle meat to produce the quintessential browned color and mouthwatering taste of barbecue.
This rearrangement occurs at around 285 Fahrenheit giving browned meat its distinctive color and flavor.
It may be tempting to go overboard with that char to get more grilly flavor, but searing your meat into oblivion has some pretty nasty consequences. Not only does the meat lose its mouth-watering flavor and texture, but it also produces potentially cancer-causing compounds.
This can all be avoided by cooking your meat at lower temperatures and flipping it often. Insider tip: Invest in a meat thermometer to make sure your meat isn't overdone.
Happy barbecuing!
Watch the full video, from the American Chemical Society's Reactions channel, on YouTube:
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How To Make An American Flag Out Of Bacon
Smooth and sweet versus floral and acidic: Any coffee aficionado can note the distinctive taste profiles that distinguish cold brew coffee from a hot cup of conventionally-brewed java.
Both beverages arise from the same starting materials, coffee grounds and water, but differ wildly in taste.
How a coffee bean is roasted and ground makes a huge difference in how the final drink tastes, smells, and feels in your mouth. But the way it's brewed is probably the most important contribution you can make to that final, sweet, sweet taste of joe.
Personally, the Tech Insider science team prefers the taste of cold brewed coffee. While we aren't going to turn our noses up to a cup of hot coffee on a cold day, we think it's fair to say that all things being equal, cold brew, subjectively, tastes better to us. Here's why.
Coffee grounds are chock full of various oils, chemical compounds, and acids. These compounds, referred to collectively as "solubles," give coffee its flavor. They're extracted from the grounds in the brewing process.
There are two basic brewing methods — which differ in brewing temperature and time — that can really change how your coffee tastes:
1) Hot-brewed drip coffee — This is what we typically imagine when we think of hot coffee. Most people make it in percolating home coffee pots or by drizzling hot water over coffee grounds and letting it drip through a filter and straight into a cup. This is the stuff they serve at diners. Baristas generally make hot coffee quickly, on the order of minutes, and it has a strong aroma with a sour or acidic bite.
2) Cold brew— Baristas make cold brew by soaking coffee grounds in room-temperature or cold water and then let it sit and steep like tea for hours or even days. Then they strain the resulting coffee "tea" from the sludgey solids. Cold brew is taking the world by storm because it often has a deeper, less acidic and more subtle taste, and is more concentrated than conventionally-brewed coffee. It's also a refreshing way to get your caffeine fix on a hot day.
When you mix coffee grounds with water, chemical reactions take place that pull solubles from the grounds, giving the resulting liquid its quintessential "coffee" taste and smell.
Coffee solubles dissolve best between 195 to 205 Fahrenheit, so coffee brewed with hot water has a more full-bodied, flavorful taste profile than cold brew. Hot water also pulls the soluble chemicals out of the grounds quickly, and makes them more volatile. This means that they evaporate into the air more easily and waft into your nose, giving off that sweet-smelling aroma.
But increased solubility isn't always a good thing. Boiling water causes coffee's chemical compounds to degrade and oxidize — kind of like how iron becomes rusty when it's exposed to too much oxygen — giving the coffee a sour and bitter taste. If you're not a fan of this taste, this is where cold brew saves the day.
Oxidation and degradation still happen when you brew your coffee cold, but it happens much more slowly. This is why cold brew almost never tastes acidic or bitter. It also stays fresh longer than hot-brewed coffee, lasting 2 to 4 weeks refrigerated. Hot coffee usually goes stale after a day.
But, since the water temperature of cold brew is below the optimal temperature to drag out those flavorful oily, acidic solubles, it has to sit for longer to create a strong brew. Baristas also add about twice as many grounds to cold brew as they do to conventional brew, which helps to boost the concentration of solubles in the final product.
While cold brew may be more palatable to some, it doesn't smell as fragrant as drip coffee, since cold and room temperature liquid doesn't volatilize the aromatic compounds. This gives cold brew a duller smell when compared with hot coffee.
Because cold brew takes much more time and more coffee grounds to make, it's often more expensive to buy than drip coffee. But it's actually very easy to make yourself, and it will save you a ton of money since even small cups of cold brew can set you back about $4.
Next time you're brewing a hot or cold cup of java, remember the chemistry. Your taste buds will thank you later.
Smooth and sweet versus floral and acidic: Any coffee aficionado can note the distinctive taste profiles that distinguish cold brew coffee from a hot cup of conventionally-brewed java.
Both beverages arise from the same starting materials, coffee grounds and water, but differ wildly in taste.
How a coffee bean is roasted and ground makes a huge difference in how the final drink tastes, smells, and feels in your mouth. But the way it's brewed is probably the most important contribution you can make to that final, sweet, sweet taste of joe.
Personally, the Tech Insider science team prefers the taste of cold brewed coffee. While we aren't going to turn our noses up to a cup of hot coffee on a cold day, we think it's fair to say that all things being equal, cold brew, subjectively, tastes better to us. Here's why.
Coffee grounds are chock full of various oils, chemical compounds, and acids. These compounds, referred to collectively as "solubles," give coffee its flavor. They're extracted from the grounds in the brewing process.
There are two basic brewing methods — which differ in brewing temperature and time — that can really change how your coffee tastes:
1) Hot-brewed drip coffee — This is what we typically imagine when we think of hot coffee. Most people make it in percolating home coffee pots or by drizzling hot water over coffee grounds and letting it drip through a filter and straight into a cup. This is the stuff they serve at diners. Baristas generally make hot coffee quickly, on the order of minutes, and it has a strong aroma with a sour or acidic bite.
2) Cold brew— Baristas make cold brew by soaking coffee grounds in room-temperature or cold water and then let it sit and steep like tea for hours or even days. Then they strain the resulting coffee "tea" from the sludgey solids. Cold brew is taking the world by storm because it often has a deeper, less acidic and more subtle taste, and is more concentrated than conventionally-brewed coffee. It's also a refreshing way to get your caffeine fix on a hot day.
When you mix coffee grounds with water, chemical reactions take place that pull solubles from the grounds, giving the resulting liquid its quintessential "coffee" taste and smell.
Coffee solubles dissolve best between 195 to 205 Fahrenheit, so coffee brewed with hot water has a more full-bodied, flavorful taste profile than cold brew. Hot water also pulls the soluble chemicals out of the grounds quickly, and makes them more volatile. This means that they evaporate into the air more easily and waft into your nose, giving off that sweet-smelling aroma.
But increased solubility isn't always a good thing. Boiling water causes coffee's chemical compounds to degrade and oxidize — kind of like how iron becomes rusty when it's exposed to too much oxygen — giving the coffee a sour and bitter taste. If you're not a fan of this taste, this is where cold brew saves the day.
Oxidation and degradation still happen when you brew your coffee cold, but it happens much more slowly. This is why cold brew almost never tastes acidic or bitter. It also stays fresh longer than hot-brewed coffee, lasting 2 to 4 weeks refrigerated. Hot coffee usually goes stale after a day.
But, since the water temperature of cold brew is below the optimal temperature to drag out those flavorful oily, acidic solubles, it has to sit for longer to create a strong brew. Baristas also add about twice as many grounds to cold brew as they do to conventional brew, which helps to boost the concentration of solubles in the final product.
While cold brew may be more palatable to some, it doesn't smell as fragrant as drip coffee, since cold and room temperature liquid doesn't volatilize the aromatic compounds. This gives cold brew a duller smell when compared with hot coffee.
Because cold brew takes much more time and more coffee grounds to make, it's often more expensive to buy than drip coffee. But it's actually very easy to make yourself, and it will save you a ton of money since even small cups of cold brew can set you back about $4.
Next time you're brewing a hot or cold cup of java, remember the chemistry. Your taste buds will thank you later.
City dwellers, take note. New research suggests that the grime and muck coating our statues, sidewalks, and windows isn't just harmlessly sitting there.
When urban grime is zapped by sunlight, it may activate and release harmful components back into the air, making it more polluted than we originally thought.
James Donaldson, a physical chemist from the University of Toronto, analyzed how sunlight affects "urban grime" both in and out of the lab. He presented his work at the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston on August 17.
The muck he's looking at is everywhere in big cities. "Urban grime" is a blend of thousands of chemical compounds spewed from car exhaust and factories. Those compounds include nitrogen oxides, highly active gases that can react with other air pollutants and produce ozone — a lung-and-airway-damaging gas. Ozone also makes up the primary component of smog.
Scientists used to think that once nitrous oxides get caked and locked onto surfaces as grime, they no longer contribute to air pollution. But Donaldson's work has suggested otherwise.
His team previously showed that after exposing grime to artificial sunlight in a lab, the nitrates that were previously packed into the grime "disappeared" from the grime about 10,000 times faster than they did in a water-based solution that was also exposed to artificial sunlight. This told Donaldson that something about the combination of grime and sunlight made the nitrates hop out of the grime quickly.
In another study, they showed that grime exposed to artificial sunlight lost more nitrates than the grime left in the dark, suggesting that it's the light that somehow excites nitrogen in grime and converts it back into its active form that can float back into the atmosphere and react with other ozone-forming compounds.
"Most think of pollutants as being lost from the atmosphere onto surfaces ... and therefore they get removed from air pollution events," Donaldson said in a press conference. But his work seems to suggest that sunlight "recycles these compounds" and brings them back into active play in the atmosphere where they can go on to pollute another day.
To test this further, Donaldson collaborated with researchers in Germany and set up a 6-week field study in Leipzig. They set containers of grime-collecting glass beads on surfaces of buildings throughout the city, some in direct sunlight, some in the shade. All containers had adequate air flow to create maximal griminess.
After analyzing the composition of the grime, Donaldson's team found that the beads exposed to sunlight contained about 10% fewer nitrates than those in the shade, suggesting that the sunlight zapped the nitrates out of the grime and back into the atmosphere.
"If our suspicions are correct, it means that the current understanding of urban air pollution is missing a big chunk of information," Donaldson said in a press release.
The team is currently analyzing data from a similar year-long study in Toronto, and are working on setting up a study in Shanghai. They hope to eventually expand their studies from glass to more chemically-reactive surfaces, such as concrete, asphalt, and brick, to include a total city surface, Donaldson said in a press conference.
As this is the first study of its kind, the team also doesn't understand how the influence of relative humidity and local pollution will change nitrate activity levels in different regions, or how this changes our current estimates of total pollution levels in cities Donaldson said in a press conference.
All of this goes to say that we have a lot more to learn about how pollution works on a mechanistic level. But one thing is fairly certain: living in a city isn't great for your health or the environment, and this is just another study showing that.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Neuroscientists are trying to understand how the brains of elite athletes work
Aerogel is about as perfect a contradiction as you could imagine.
It holds the record as the lightest solid ever created, yet is durable enough to support the weight of a car or survive the vacuum of space.
Because of these seemingly magical qualities, researchers have woven the material into capacitors, lasers, spacecraft, and nuclear weapons.
Aerogel hasn't languished inside laboratories, though. You can find it inside modern carpets, cosmetics, paints, pipes, wetsuits, and roofs, just to name just a few products. And today inventors are creating new recipes and manufacturing techniques for aerogel, leading to novel applications that include thin yet incredibly warm (and stylish) jackets and oil spill-cleanup kits.
Without Samuel Stephens Kistler's fortuitous discovery of aerogel in the early 1900s, however, we might still be dreaming about the existence of this incredible, cloud-like substance.
Here's what aerogel is, where it came from, and how it's increasingly working its way into everyday life.
People often describe aerogel as feeling like Styrofoam or that flaky, green foam that serves as potting for fake plants. That's because of aerogel's internal sponge-like structure; the material is so dehydrated that it's about 99% air.
"The first thing most people do when they touch a piece of silica aerogel for the first time is shatter it into a million pieces," says the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory website on silica aerogels.
Despite this fragility, aerogel is very strong. It can support up to 4,000 times its weight.
Scientists have created recipes for more than a dozen different types of aerogel, but they all share a similar process: mix chemicals together, let them settle into a wet gel, and then suck all of the liquid out. (You can make aerogel yourself if you're patient, determined, and have about about $1,000 sitting around.)
It's actually a pretty complex process and material, so it helps to think of aerogel as similar to Jell-O.
The gelatin powder in Jell-O forms a flexible, liquid solution when mixed with warm water. As it cools, the liquid solution sets into shape by forming a stiff, tangled network. Under a powerful microscope it looks like an unruly ball of yarn. But if you heated up the set Jell-O, it would dry out and you'd be left with a lump of Jell-O powder once again.
Aerogel, on the other hand, isn't made of gelatin but one of a variety of substances, depending upon its intended use.
Chemists most often make it from from silica — the most abundant mineral in Earth's crust. Unlike the process of simply leaving Jell-O to set, however, they cycle wet aerogel through multiple phases of cooling and heating under pressure, which retains the silica network's shape even after completely drying out.
The resulting aerogel is almost entirely air, making it the most lightweight solid we know of. And because air is pretty terrible at conducting heat, so is aerogel.
It can protect delicate flowers from searing flames...
…And easily-meltable Hershey's Kisses.
The details surrounding Kistler's discovery of this incredible material are disappointingly murky. In fact, no one knows exactly when or where the revelation happened. We also don't know if Kistler coined the term "aerogel" or pillaged the name from someone else. (It's even hard to find a good photo of Kistler.)
Still, most historians agree the magical moment happened at some point between 1929 and 1930, when Kistler taught undergraduate courses at College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. The apocryphal tale goes that he and colleague Charles Learned were in a friendly competition: to see who could replace the liquid in a jar of jam with a gas, but leave the structure and shape of the jam in tact. (Every teacher's favorite after-class game.)
Kistler won the bet, and ended up discovering aerogel as a fortuitous bonus. He went on to publish his first study about aerogels in the journal Nature in 1931, then patented the method of producing aerogel on Sept. 21, 1937.
In the early 1940s, Kistler signed a contract with Monsanto Company — today an agricultural company known for developing and selling genetically modified plants.
A Monsanto plant in Massachusetts manufactured the first silica-based aerogel products under the trade names Santocel, Santocel-C, Santocel-54, and Santocel-Z. Their first application: a lightweight thickening agent for paints, makeup, and napalm. Aerogel even made its way into cigarette filters and freezer insulation.
A 1951 Monsanto annual report boasted its exceptional applications:
Significant and unusual applications for Santocel, outside the flatting and insulation fields, were developed for civilian and military use. Among these were the Department of Agriculture's approval of Santocel as a thickening agent for screwworm salves for sheep, and its use as a thickening agent in the jelly of the fiery Napalm bomb. Santocel also has become an essential ingredient in the manufacture of silicone rubber.
But Monsanto reportedly discontinued the line in 1970. It was expensive to manufacture, and competition from other, newer, and well-marketed products pushed aerogel to the bottom of their business priorities.
Kistler died in 1975 — just a few years before his supermaterial really took off. In the late 1970s, researchers in France developed a novel method of producing aerogel in just a few hours instead of weeks. Then, in the early 1980s, scientists in Germany realized its potential use in particle physics applications, according to aerogel.org.
This would pave the way for Aerogel's bright future.
As Kistler neared retirement, he self-published a collection of writings on non-scientific topics called "Memorabilia."
In one excerpt from 1955, he wrote, "We are finite beings in the midst of an infinite universe ... as far as we can perceive, space is limitless in all directions ... the farther we probe into the structure of matter ... the more we discover that in generations to come will have bearing upon the everyday activities of people."
His musings on space turned out to be apt, because in the late 90s, NASA scientists fashioned silica-based aerogel onto a massive, tennis-racket-shaped collector that sat outside its Stardust spacecraft to collect pristine pieces of the infant solar system.
During NASA's Stardust mission, aerogel proved essential fragile particle fragments trailing behind the Comet Wild 2.
It was the perfect choice because the material's tangled structure acted as microscopic baseball gloves to capture fast-moving comet particles without damaging them. It's relative transparency also helped scientists back on Earth easily find and extract the comet dust for analysis.
Today, the world is taking advantage of its many properties for use in modern-day products. It lines the walls of buildings in the form of insulation. Clothing companies use it to create super light-weight and warm ski jackets. It's even inside some tennis rackets.
Researchers are also looking to the energy-absorbing properties of silica aerogels for novel uses, such as shock-absorbers in cars, cradling aircraft flight data recorders, and protecting fragile electronics such as laptop computer hard drives. They're even testing cellulose-based aerogels for cleaning up oil spills, and are mixing up new types of aerogels that are stronger and more resilient than the silica aerogels of days past.
Then there are polymer-based aerogels, which are essentially made from plastics and make excellent insulators for refrigerators and clothing. They're more robust than the flaky silica-based aerogels, yet just as light.
Mary Ann Meador, a senior research scientist at NASA's Glenn Research Center, told Tech Insider that the only challenge now is manufacturing aerogels at a higher scale and lower cost, which she hopes will happen within the next one or two years.
"We’ve demonstrated a lot of properties of these materials and they're useful now, but we can only make things on a pilot scale or less," Meador told Tech Insider. "As more products come online, I think that they have the potential to revolutionize the field."
SEE ALSO: 4 unbelievable chemical substances humans have discovered
City dwellers, take note. New research suggests that the grime and muck coating our statues, sidewalks, and windows isn't just harmlessly sitting there.
When urban grime is zapped by sunlight, it may activate and release harmful components back into the air, making it more polluted than we originally thought.
James Donaldson, a physical chemist from the University of Toronto, analyzed how sunlight affects "urban grime" both in and out of the lab. He presented his work at the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston on August 17.
The muck he's looking at is everywhere in big cities. "Urban grime" is a blend of thousands of chemical compounds spewed from car exhaust and factories. Those compounds include nitrogen oxides, highly active gases that can react with other air pollutants and produce ozone — a lung-and-airway-damaging gas. Ozone also makes up the primary component of smog.
Scientists used to think that once nitrous oxides get caked and locked onto surfaces as grime, they no longer contribute to air pollution. But Donaldson's work has suggested otherwise.
His team previously showed that after exposing grime to artificial sunlight in a lab, the nitrates that were previously packed into the grime "disappeared" from the grime about 10,000 times faster than they did in a water-based solution that was also exposed to artificial sunlight. This told Donaldson that something about the combination of grime and sunlight made the nitrates hop out of the grime quickly.
In another study, they showed that grime exposed to artificial sunlight lost more nitrates than the grime left in the dark, suggesting that it's the light that somehow excites nitrogen in grime and converts it back into its active form that can float back into the atmosphere and react with other ozone-forming compounds.
"Most think of pollutants as being lost from the atmosphere onto surfaces ... and therefore they get removed from air pollution events," Donaldson said in a press conference. But his work seems to suggest that sunlight "recycles these compounds" and brings them back into active play in the atmosphere where they can go on to pollute another day.
To test this further, Donaldson collaborated with researchers in Germany and set up a 6-week field study in Leipzig. They set containers of grime-collecting glass beads on surfaces of buildings throughout the city, some in direct sunlight, some in the shade. All containers had adequate air flow to create maximal griminess.
After analyzing the composition of the grime, Donaldson's team found that the beads exposed to sunlight contained about 10% fewer nitrates than those in the shade, suggesting that the sunlight zapped the nitrates out of the grime and back into the atmosphere.
"If our suspicions are correct, it means that the current understanding of urban air pollution is missing a big chunk of information," Donaldson said in a press release.
The team is currently analyzing data from a similar year-long study in Toronto, and are working on setting up a study in Shanghai. They hope to eventually expand their studies from glass to more chemically-reactive surfaces, such as concrete, asphalt, and brick, to include a total city surface, Donaldson said in a press conference.
As this is the first study of its kind, the team also doesn't understand how the influence of relative humidity and local pollution will change nitrate activity levels in different regions, or how this changes our current estimates of total pollution levels in cities Donaldson said in a press conference.
All of this goes to say that we have a lot more to learn about how pollution works on a mechanistic level. But one thing is fairly certain: living in a city isn't great for your health or the environment, and this is just another study showing that.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Neuroscientists are trying to understand how the brains of elite athletes work
Outside of the Pacific, kava tea is a bit of a mystery.
But the plant is often used in native countries as part of religious and cultural ceremonies, and those familiar with the drink recreationally celebrate it as an effective way to curb anxiety. It's also claimed to make you feel relaxed and even a little numb.
Some controversial reports, however, also claim kava causes mild hallucinations and can even get you high.
As part of a Tech Insider reporting trip, I recently visited Hawaii — where kava (also called awa) is common. So I took the opportunity to conduct a recreational experiment in pharmacology.
I visited a tiny kava bar that was tucked away in a corner of Kona on the big island of Hawaii, and I dragged along a few friends I made during a surfing lesson earlier in the day.
According to Kona Kava Farm, the tea is pretty simple to make. Just grind up the roots from a kava plant, add some water, and voila — relaxation in a cup.
We all ordered large sizes, started sipping, and waited to feel something.
The tea tasted pretty bitter, not unlike a strong cup of coffee. About halfway through the glass I could tell that I felt more relaxed. By the end of the cup I felt mellow and in a great mood — but I didn't feel high and I definitely wasn't hallucinating. So we decided to order another round and continue hanging out together.
I drank the second glass much slower than the first one. Something about kava fills you up; I didn't feel hungry or thirsty the rest of the night.
By the end of the second glass I just felt incredibly relaxed. I was also in a fantastic mood. The most annoying, obnoxious person in the world could have sat down next to me, and I probably wouldn't have minded. I didn't opt for a third glass, since it seemed like the effects weren't changing (that and I felt incredibly full).
I'd already researched kava tea a little before the trip, but that night at my hotel I dug in some more.
I learned the key compound in kava that triggers relaxation is called kavain, and it's similar to a sedative. It doesn't affect the brain though. Instead, it acts like a muscle relaxer, so you're mentally alert but physically loosened up.
But kava does have another active compound, called yangonin. This chemical is likely the one that makes some people compare it to marijuana, since it affects the same brain receptors as THC — the chemical responsible for marijuana's psychological effects.
There's also a third interesting compound, called desmethyoxyyangonin, which drives up dopamine levels in the brain. This can give the drinker the sensation of euphoria, which probably explained my unbelievably good mood.
As for the hallucination mystery surrounding kava? It sounds like some people might be confusing kava with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic ceremonial drink from the Amazon basin.
Although it might seem brash to down a cup of body and mood-altering tea, there is some scientific research on kava tea as a legitimate means to help some people. Research published by Cochrane suggests it's pretty effective at curbing social anxiety, at least compared to a placebo.
The important disclaimer here, though, is that kava has also been linked to liver damage and even fatal poisoning. (Although you'd probably have to drink a lot of kava, and regularly, for either of those things to happen.)
There's also some discrepancy about what might cause the liver damage. Some think it's caused by toxic alkaloids in the leaves and stems of the plant, which people can accidentally mix into the tea, according to research from South Dakota University.
Given this kind of preliminary research, it's clear that we need more to understand kava's benefits and risks — especially since kava tea is spreading like wildfire.
In fact, the very first kava bar in New York City just opened this summer, and who knows where the next ones will pop up.
Editor's note: In an earlier version of this story, we mistated the part of the kava plant that's used for kava tea. The roots are used, not the leaves.
Join the conversation about this story »
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Here's a mistake I'm embarrassed to admit; and one that I make far too often. Immediately after waking up, I get very excited for coffee so I brew a giant batch.
But then I realize halfway through that I can't finish it.
Not wanting to waste a jug of perfectly good brew, I leave it on the counter for safe keeping so I can heat it up and drink it later.
But: It's always a bad decision, but I keep doing it anyways even though it tastes disgusting every time.
Turns out that there's actually a scientific explanation for why this happens. And there are certain things you can do to avoid — or at least delay — your coffee from going stale.
Coffee grounds are chock full of various oils, chemical compounds, and acids. These compounds, referred to collectively as "solubles," give coffee its flavor. They're extracted from the grounds in the brewing process and give coffee its quintessential "coffee" taste and smell.
But once those beans touch air, the oxygen begins to zap their flavor and make them smell different almost immediately by causing coffee solubles to either degrade and oxidize — kind of like how iron becomes rusty when it's exposed to oxygen for too long — or because they drift away into the air.
This is why roasters package their beans in vacuum-sealed containers, so the beans are no longer in contact with oxygen from the air.
One of the most susceptible yet sweet-smelling solubles is a sulfur compound called methanethiol. It plays a key role in making coffee beans smell fresh, as well as masking less desirable aromas, such as the unpleasantly bitter smell that people associate with raw green peas. But then coffee continues to go stale when you mix coffee grounds with water. Coffee solubles dissolve best between 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit, so coffee brewed with hot water has a more full-bodied, flavorful taste profile than coffee brewed with room-temperature or cold water, which is also called cold brew.
But as the boiling water pulls out the solubles from the grounds, they continue to oxidize yet again, giving hot coffee more of a sour and bitter taste.
This process begins to happen the moment any water hits the beans, and it gets more intense the longer the coffee sits after you brew it. You can even notice the change in taste just an hour after you brew the coffee. This is why fancy coffee houses brew small batches of coffee to order, rather than reserving large jugs of it diner-style.
The easy way to prevent a stale-tasting brew is by locking in the freshness of your beans before you brew them by storing them in an air-tight container. And after you brew, transfer your coffee to an air-tight thermos if you want to maximize freshness for longer.
But as we all know, we can't stop the damaging effects of time. And eventually, we'll all be left with a cold pot of bitter, tasteless sludge — a good point to keep in your memory bank the next time you're itching to save a cup for later.
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Take a look at what happens when you brush nitrogen triiodide with a feather.
The compound nitrogen triiodide is extremely unstable due to its structure. It's formed of a nitrogen atom and three atoms of iodine, which all bundle closely together on one side of the nitrogen.
The close proximity of the nitrogen atoms, which are much smaller than the iodine, creates "bond strain," which results from the electron-electron repulsion of atoms that are too close together.
The potential energy this strain creates makes the molecule extremely unstable and prone to be more reactive. In this case, extremely reactive. When it comes into contact with even slight pressure the molecules fall apart, creating a dramatic chain reaction that produces a vibrant plume of purple iodine gas.
Let The Royal Institution walk you through the minefield that is nitrogen triiodide and show you the reaction in awesome slow-mo footage.
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Even if you don't watch a lot of beauty pageants, you can probably guess that when Miss Vermont took the stage in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 10 during the Miss America preliminary rounds and announced she would perform "a science experiment of epic proportions," something a bit different was going on.
"I will be the first to do a science experiment on the Miss America stage," she told NJ Advance Media in an interview, before she unveiled her talent in front of a cheering crowd.
After a perky monologue explaining that "science is all around us," she reminds the audience that "science can be messy — so don't try this at home."
Then she puts on her goggles — safety first! — and mixes hydrogen peroxide, potassium iodide, and soap in a few beakers. The stage-worthy result:
Miss Vermont's experiment, a popular one in introductory chemistry classes, is commonly known as "Elephant's Toothpaste." The potassium iodide speeds up the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, which rapidly breaks down into oxygen and water. The water foams up the soap, and the oxygen shoots it up out of its container. All those colors you see are just food coloring, added for extra pizzazz.
For Miss Vermont, 24, whose real name is Alayna Westcom, the performance is more than just a stunt. Westcom's platform for the pageant is "Success Through STEM."
Her undergraduate degree is in forensics, and she completed a three-semester post-baccalaureate in in medical laboratory science. According to Seven Days, Vermont's alt-weekly publication, Westcom "works ... at Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans and as an autopsy technician for Vermont's chief medical examiner in Burlington." Ultimately, Seven Days reported, she'd like to go to medical school and become a medical examiner herself.
As the reigning Miss Vermont, she also visits schools throughout the state to promote an interest in STEM. Her well-practiced Elephant's Toothpaste is apparently popular with the kids she visits, too.
"For so many years when I was going to school and choosing a STEM career, I'd always been told, 'You don't look like a scientist,'" she told Seven Days.
Now she's trying to prove the haters wrong.
Watch Miss Vermont's full presentation below.
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The 25th Ig Nobel Awards recognized some of the year's most bizarre, trivial or unusual discoveries in the fields of biology, economics, and mathematics. If you've ever wondered if a chicken can walk like a dinosaur, this Nobel Awards parody is for you.
Produced by Rob Ludacer
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It may come as a surprise that infamous whistle-blower and fugitive Edward Snowden never finished high school.
Instead, he went straight to community college, completed a master's program in computer security, and quickly rose up through the ranks of the National Security Agency.
Then, in 2013, he leaked documents to the press exposing the government's top-secret mass-surveillance program that collected private information about Americans via phone records without their knowledge.
The US charged him with three felonies, and he's now living in Russia under asylum.
But astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson got Snowden to appear on the September 18 episode of his podcast, StarTalk. From Russia, Snowden controlled a robot telepresence unit, which he rolled into Tyson's New York office at the American Museum of Natural History.
While the two discussed his background, Snowden revealed his biggest regret about not finishing high school.
"I was always fascinated with science, and one of the great grievances I have about dropping out of high school early is the fact that I never finished chemistry," Snowden said during the episode. "I've always loved chemistry."
Snowden said that sometimes dropping out of school is the right decision if you're already an expert in an area that you really excel in. That's why, say, a gifted software programmer may drop out and start designing full time, or a musical prodigy may decide not to take any calculus classes.
And that's a good thing because structured curriculum isn't how we advance the knowledge of the human race, Snowden argued.
"Who teaches the untaught?" Snowden asks during the episode. "Knowledge has to originate from somewhere. There has to be sort of a fountainhead from which it flows, and that can't be a classroom because the teachers themselves have to have learned it from somewhere."
That's why original research, the pursuit of the unknown, and the questioning of accepted conventional wisdom, are so vital, Snowden said.
And Tyson agreed.
"Most people think that scientists scratch their head all night and say 'Eureka!' by morning, but no," Tyson said. "The word that triggers discovery is always 'That's funny. Hmm, I don't know what that is.'"
Still, you may find down the road that you have a glaring hole in your education (like chemistry). Snowden decided to fix the chemistry gap in his education. He even read a metalurgy (the physical and chemical behavior of metals) textbook — for fun.
Listen to the entire StarTalk conversation with Edward Snowden >>
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When natural disasters strike, first aid workers are tasked with an especially morbid mission: to find and remove dead bodies.
They have to sift through the rubble of toppled buildings and charred forests to locate, ID, and dispose of human remains.
It's a hard job, so they enlist the help of scent-sniffing dogs to detect the bodies.
But training dogs to pick up the scent of cadavers is extremely challenging because we still don't fully understand what chemicals make up the human "smell of death."
Scientists from the University of Leuven in Belgium have gotten one step closer, however, after analyzing dozens of rotting human and animal body parts. From this analysis, they isolated 452 chemical compounds associated with death, and of those, five appear to be specific to humans. They published their results on September 16 in the journal PLOS ONE.
To compare the smells of different corpses, the team collected a variety of human and animal body parts — tissues and organs from humans and pigs, as well as the remains of dead mice, rabbits, moles, frogs, birds, and even a sturgeon and a turtle. The human body parts came from autopsies performed at a hospital in Belgium. Then they sealed the specimens in glass jars and put them in a closet.
The team then analyzed the gases emanating from the rotting body parts on a regular schedule for six months. After comparing the hundreds of odorous compounds they found wafting from the samples, they identified eight compounds specific to humans and pigs. They then sorted these further and identified five compounds associated with the degradation of muscle, fats, and carbohydrates that were present in the human remains but not in the pig's.
Researchers have been trying for decades to figure out what makes that human death smell so ... human. But finding the answer to this question has been challenging.
When bodies decompose, they release distinct chemical cocktails that waft into the nose. Many factors— such as the collection of bacteria in and on the body, air temperature and humidity, the type of soil that's touching the body, and whether or not it is submerged — affect the makeup of the compounds hovering around the corpse.
Human bodies are also hard to come by in research labs, so scientists mainly analyze the death scent of dead pigs, which have similar skin, hair, gut bacteria, and muscle-to-body fat ratios as humans. Because these researchers compared actual decomposing human tissue with those of other animals, they were able to use the process of elimination to figure out which compounds are only present in humans.
These new results — which could provide new training materials for dogs or even help develop a machine that could electronically sniff out a corpse — have some limitations. The size of the jars meant that the team could only analyze parts of organs and tissues, rather than entire corpses, which could have limited the chemical compounds that were released.
They also performed the study in a controlled lab environment, rather than in nature, which could have evoked a different chemical response.
Nevertheless, it's an exciting addition to the research aiming to uncover the human death smell — which unfortunately has proven rotten for years.
Few honors attract as much excitement in the world of science as the Nobel Prizes.
Each year, media company Thomson Reuters releases its annual list of the researchers it thinks are most likely to win the prize in physiology or medicine, chemistry, physics, and economics.
So far, they've been pretty spot on: Since 2002, they've accurately forecast 37 Nobel Prize winners. The 2015 Nobel Laureates will be announced between October 5 and 12.
And this year, a higher-than-usual number of the potential laureates are women.
Thomson Reuters bases its predictions on which scientific studies had the greatest number of citations, or mentions by other studies.
Here are the scientists they've named as being in the running this year.
CHECK OUT: These are the scientific innovations likely to win this year's Nobel Prizes
SEE ALSO: Here are the breakthroughs that could win a Nobel Prize for medicine
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Commercial brewers put a ton of time and research into ensuring that their packaged beers taste as if they were just poured from the tap.
But the design of a pint glasses has a lot to do with how good a beer tastes as well.
Carefully curved lips and double-walled constructions improve the presentation and drinking experience of beer, but some brewers and manufacturers are taking the design a step further by etching marks or patterns onto the bottoms of their glasses to make the beer bubblier.
This practice is becoming increasingly more common — and perhaps you've had a drink out of one of these glasses without even knowing it.
These rough etchings are called nucleation points, and their job is to disturb the beer when it touches them. This gives the dissolved gas in the liquid something to latch on to and form bubbles, producing a steady stream of the bubbles as they rise from the base.
"Etchings on the bottom of glasses do not improve carbonation, they actually release some carbonation that is already dissolved as the beer hits the surfaces of the etching," Sheri Jewhurst, the “dictator” of the homebrew club The Brewminaries, told Tech Insider via email.
This is similar to what happens when you drop a Mentos tablet into a can of Diet Coke. The gas that has been dissolved in the soda or beer — usually carbon dioxide — is what gives the drink its bubbles. The liquid is bottled under pressure to keep the bubbles in, and when you open the can or bottle, those bubbles start to make their way out of the liquid, giving you a great fizz.
While the gas will create bubbles naturally, you can speed this process along by giving the bubbles something to latch on to. An object with rough ridges or a bumpy surface — the Mentos, for example — can catalyze bubble-making.
In the classic Mentos and Diet Coke experiment, the mint drops into the soda and forms so many bubbles that it creates intense pressure. Those bubbles have nowhere to go but up, causing an eruption.
Nucleated beer glasses don't cause eruptions, but they produce just enough bubbles to rise through the glass to "refresh" your beer, Jewhurst said. Refresh, in this case, means making it fizzier as opposed to flatter, as if were just poured from the tap.
The photo below shows a side-by-side comparison of a glass with nucleation points (left) versus one without them (right). You can see how much more fizzy the drink on the left is.
But this bubble stream effect, while neat in appearance, is not always welcomed.
"I believe there is also a cosmetic appeal in etchings to have little bubbles dancing through your glass," Jewhurst said."However, with highly carbonated beers such as wit beers, having the constant flow of bubbles coming up from the bottom can actually be kind of a nuisance since they are so prolific."
Next time you purchase a pint glass or are at your local pub, check out the inside. If it has the etchings, you know you'll be in for a fizzy ride.
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Have you ever noticed the clink-clank of a tiny object rattling around the inside of an empty Guinness bottle or can?
That little gadget is called a "widget," and you should be thankful for it. It's making your beer taste like it was just poured fresh from the tap.
A widget is a hollow, spherical piece of plastic with a tiny hole in it — it looks like a little ping pong ball.
During the canning process, brewers add pressurized nitrogen to the brew, which trickles into the hole along with a little bit of beer. The entire can is then pressurized.
When you open the can, the pressure inside the can drops to equalize with the pressure in the room. Since the pressure inside the widget is still much higher than the pressure in the beer around it, the nitrogenated beer from inside the widget squirts into the beer — providing a burst of tiny bubbles of nitrogen gas that rise to the top of beer, giving it a thick, creamy head you'd get straight from the tap.
Guinness brewers first patented the idea of the widget in 1969, but it wasn't until 20 years later in 1989 when they released their first-generation widget, which was a flattened sphere that sat at the bottom of the can. This little piece of plastic did its job well when serving the beer cold, but when served warm, the beer exploded everywhere after the can was cracked open.
Breweries typically use carbon dioxide to give a beer its quintessential bitter fizz, but when a drink calls for a sweeter, silkier experience — such as the experience you get when drinking a Guinness — brewers infuse the ale with nitrogen rather than with carbon dioxide. Nitrogen bubbles are smaller than CO2 bubbles, so the resulting head and taste is smoother and more delicate.
Nitrogen gas also doesn't easily dissolve in water, so when you crack open a beer, most of the gas is released into the air but the foamy bubbles in the head still remain. This — along with the smaller bubbles — gives the brew a thicker, more velvety "mouthfeel" without the acidic bite of carbonation with CO2.
Because of the fleeting nature of nitrogen gas in liquid, it's really hard to maintain tasty levels of the gas in packaged beers once you open them.
"With nitrogen, you would require way higher (and dangerous) levels of pressure, and still loose plenty of nitrogen (and beer due to foaming) during packaging," Xavier Jirau, scientific advisor of the homebrew club The Brewminaries, told Tech Insider via email. "In order to deal with this issue, brewers got little creative, and there is where Guinness plastic widgets come into play."
The popularity of widgets have caught on since Guinness introduced them in the late 80s. Other beers such as Old Speckled Hen, Young's Double Chocolate Stout, Murphy's Stout, and Boddingtons Pub Ale all have widgets in their cans.
So go crack a cold one and thank that little plastic sphere for delivering your delicious, velvety brew.
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The pub at the end of my block has a lot going for it. It boasts a huge variety of craft beers, a beautiful patio, and a killer Monday night trivia.
But every time I order a fancy brew at a great bar like this, I wonder, is their glassware clean?
Luckily, there's a super easy way to tell. If the inside of your pint glass is dirty, one main thing will happen: Streams of bubbles will flow from the walls of your glass.
I know, it sounds weird because — unless your beer is flat — there are going to be bubbles dancing all over the place. But if the fizz is originating from the inside walls, your cup likely has some gunk in it.
Here's why: The tiny layers of grime are creating rough spots on the glass that agitate the beer. These are called "nucleation points," which provide a place for the dissolved gas in your beer — usually carbon dioxide — to grab onto and promote bubble formation. This makes your beer fizzy.
The physical process is similar to what happens when you drop a Mentos tablet into a can of Diet Coke. The dissolved gas in the soda gives the drink its bubbles. The liquid is bottled under pressure to keep the bubbles in, and when you open the can or bottle, those bubbles start to make their way out of the liquid, creating the beer's distinctive fizz.
While the gas will create bubbles naturally, this process can be sped along by giving the bubbles something to latch on to. An object with rough ridges or a bumpy surface — the Mentos, for example, or grime on a glass — can catalyze bubble-making.
In the classic Mentos and Diet Coke experiment, the mint drops into the soda and forms so many bubbles that it creates intense pressure. Those bubbles have nowhere to go but up, causing an eruption.
Nucleation is generally a good thing when it comes to beers. More and more, brewers and glass manufacturers designing glasses with lasered etchings onto the bottom of the cup to agitate the beer and promote fizziness and a frothy head.
But if this fizziness is coming from a dirty glass, then you should definitely bring it back and demand a new one. There's no shame in becoming even more of a beer snob than you already are.
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Video produced by Grace Raver. Big cat footage courtesy of Big Cat Rescue.
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