In step toward controlling chemistry, physicists create a new molecule, atom by atom

By working in extremely controlled conditions, Eric Hudson and his colleagues could observe properties of atoms and molecules that have previously been hidden from view. (Stuart Wolpert/UCLA)

For the past 200 years, scientists have been observing the natural chemical reactions that occur in our environment- from food and drugs to living organisms to develop rules and gain a better grasp of chemistry. A universal rule in chemical reactions is the “octet rule”, stating that each and every atom in a molecule that is made by a chemical reaction will have eight outer orbiting electrons. Scientists have found out exclusions to the octet rule, but those exclusions are rare.

Michael Mills, Prateek Puri, Eric Hudson and Christian Schneider ((Stuart Wolpert/UCLA)

In recent events, the molecule that was created by a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor, Eric Hudson and with the help of his colleagues, Christian Schneider, a UCLA research scientist; Ionel Simbotin, a University of Connecticut physics postdoctoral scholar; John Montgomery Jr., a University of Connecticut research professor of physics; Robin Côté, a University of Connecticut professor of physics; and Arthur Suits, a University of Missouri professor of chemistry breached that rule.

They discovered a new method for creating a unique molecule that can be potentially applied in medicine, food science, and other relating fields. The research shows how chemical reactions can be observed on a microscopic scale using tools of physics. Barium-Oxygen-Calcium or BaOCa+, is the first ever molecule that was observed by scientists that are composed of an oxygen atom bonded to two different metal atoms. Generally, one metal atom can only react with an oxygen atom to produce a stable molecule. Yet, the scientists at UCLA added a second metal atom and produced a new molecule, BaOCa+, in which the octet rule is no longer fulfilled. There have been numerous observations using other molecules that could violate the octet rule, but the researched conducted by the UCLA scientist is the first to be observed using tools from physics like ion traps, laser, and ultra-cold atom traps. 

Under these highly controlled conditions, the scientists could observe properties of the atoms and molecules that are otherwise hidden from view, and the physics tools they used enabled them to hold a sample of atoms and observe chemical reactions one molecule at a time. In Hudson’s laboratory, to cool tiny amount of the reactant atoms and molecules, he used laser light with extremely low temperature and then float them into a space smaller than the width of a human hair, inside of a vacuum chamber. The ultra-cold temperatures used in the experiment can also be used to simulate the reaction as it would occur in outer space. This approach is part of a new physics-inspired subfield of chemistry that uses the tools of ultra-cold physics, such as lasers and electromagnetism, to observe and control how and when single-particle reactions occur.

According to Hudson, the research could help scientists understand how certain complex molecules, including some that could be precursors to life, came to exist in space. The researchers found that when they brought together calcium and barium methoxide inside of their system under normal conditions, no reaction would occur because the atoms could not find a way to rearrange themselves to form a stable molecule. However, when the scientists used a laser to change the distribution of the electrons in the calcium atom, the reaction quickly proceeded, producing a new molecule, CaOBa+. 

UCLA graduate student Prateek Puri, the project’s lead researcher, said the experiment demonstrates not only how these techniques can be used to create exotic molecules, but also how they can be used to engineer important reactions. The discovery could ultimately be used to create new methods for preserving food by preventing unwanted chemical reactions between food and the environment or developing safer medications by eliminating the chemical reactions that cause negative side effects.

"Experiments like these pave the way for developing new methods for controlling chemistry," Puri said. "We're essentially creating 'on buttons' for reactions."

Hudson hopes the work will encourage other scientists to further narrow the gap between physics and chemistry and to demonstrate that increasingly complex molecules can be studied and controlled.

One key factor to the success of the new study was the involvement of experts from various fields: experimental physicists, theoretical physicists, and a physical chemist. The device enables us to detect and identify the products of reactions on the single-particle level, and it has created a new bridge between the fascinating fields of chemistry and physics. 

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JOURNAL REFERENCE:

1. Prateek Puri, Michael Mills, Christian Schneider, Ionel Simbotin, John A. Montgomery, Robin Côté, Arthur G. Suits, Eric R. Hudson. Synthesis of mixed hypermetallic oxide BaOCa from laser-cooled reagents in an atom-ion hybrid trap. Science, 2017; eaan4701 DOI: 10.1126/science.aan4701

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SOURCES:

1.http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/step-toward-controlling-chemistry-physicists-create-new-type-molecule-atom-by-atom

2.https://www.thesciencemic.com/feed-items/in-step-toward-controlling-chemistry-physicists-create-a-new-molecule-atom-by-atom

Scientists witness huge cosmic crash, find origins of gold

This illustration provided by the Carnegie Institution for Science depicts the collision of two neutron stars detected on Aug. 17, 2017. The explosion threw matter, light, radiation and gravitational waves into space. The discovery was reported on Monday, Oct. 16, 2017. (Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a faint signal, but it told of one of the most violent acts in the universe, and it would soon reveal secrets of the cosmos, including how gold was created.

Astronomers around the world reacted to the signal quickly, focusing telescopes located on every continent and even in orbit to a distant spot in the sky.

What they witnessed in mid-August and revealed Monday was the long-ago collision of two neutron stars — a phenomenon California Institute of Technology's David H. Reitze called "the most spectacular fireworks in the universe."

"When these things collide, all hell breaks loose," he said.

David Reitze of the California Institute of Technology and the executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, during an announcement on one of the most violent events in the cosmos that was witnessed completely for the first time in August and tells scientists where gold and other heavy elements come from. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Measurements of the light and other energy emanating from the crash have helped scientists explain how planet-killing gamma ray bursts are born, how fast the universe is expanding, and where heavy elements like platinum and gold come from.

"This is getting everything you wish for," said Syracuse University physics professor Duncan Brown, one of more than 4,000 scientists involved in the blitz of science that the crash kicked off. "This is our fantasy observation."

It started in a galaxy called NGC 4993, seen from Earth in the Hydra constellation. Two neutron stars, collapsed cores of stars so dense that a teaspoon of their matter would weigh 1 billion tons, danced ever faster and closer together until they collided, said Carnegie Institution astronomer Maria Drout.

The crash, called a kilonova, generated a fierce burst of gamma rays and a gravitational wave, a faint ripple in the fabric of space and time, first theorized by Albert Einstein.

"This is like a cosmic atom smasher at a scale far beyond humans would be capable of building," said Andy Howell, a staff scientist at the Las Cumbres Observatory. "We finally now know what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object and it's a kilonova."

The crash happened 130 million years ago, while dinosaurs still roamed on Earth, but the signal didn't arrive on Earth until Aug. 17 after traveling 130 million light-years. A light-year is 5.88 trillion miles.

David Reitze of the California Institute of Technology and the executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, during an announcement on one of the most violent events in the cosmos that was witnessed completely for the first time in August and tells scientists where gold and other heavy elements come from. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Signals were picked up within 1.7 seconds of each other, by NASA's Fermi telescope, which detects gamma rays, and gravity wave detectors in Louisiana and Washington state that are a part of the LIGO Laboratory , whose founders won a Nobel Prize earlier this month. A worldwide alert went out to focus telescopes on what became the most well-observed astronomical event in history.

Before August, the only other gravity waves detected by LIGO were generated by colliding black holes. But black holes let no light escape, so astronomers could see nothing.

This time there was plenty to see, measure and analyze: matter, light, and other radiation. The Hubble Space Telescope even got a snapshot of the afterglow.

Finding where the crash happened wasn't easy. Eventually scientists narrowed the location down to 100 galaxies, began a closer search of those, and found it in the ninth galaxy they looked at.

Vicky Kalogera, a gravitational-wave astrophysicist at Northwestern University who contributed to the historic detections of gravitational waves, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, during an announcement on one of the most violent events in the cosmos that was witnessed completely for the first time in August and tells scientists where gold and other heavy elements come from. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

It is like "the classic challenge of finding a needle in the haystack with the added challenge that the needle is fading away and the haystack is moving," said Marcelle Soares-Santos, an astrophysicist at Brandeis University.

"The completeness of this picture from the beginning to the end is unprecedented," said Columbia University physics professor Szabolcs Marka. "There are many, many extraordinary discoveries within the discovery."

The colliding stars spewed bright blue, super-hot debris that was dense and unstable. Some of it coalesced into heavy elements, like gold, platinum and uranium. Scientists had suspected neutron star collisions had enough power to create heavier elements, but weren't certain until they witnessed it.

"We see the gold being formed," said Syracuse's Brown.

Calculations from a telescope measuring ultraviolet light showed that the combined mass of the heavy elements from this explosion is 1,300 times the mass of Earth. And all that stuff — including lighter elements — was thrown out in all different directions and is now speeding across the universe.

Perhaps one day the material will clump together into planets the way ours was formed, Reitze said — maybe ones with rich veins of precious metals.

"We already knew that iron came from a stellar explosion, the calcium in your bones came from stars and now we know the gold in your wedding ring came from merging neutron stars," said University of California Santa Cruz's Ryan Foley.

The crash also helped explain the origins of one of the most dangerous forces of the cosmos — short gamma ray bursts, focused beams of radiation that could erase life on any planet that happened to get in the way. These bursts shoot out in two different directions perpendicular to where the two neutron stars first crash, Reitze said.

Luckily for us, the beams of gamma rays were not focused on Earth and were generated too far away to be a threat, he said.

Marica Branchesi, an astronomer who has been part of the LIGO and Virgo collaborations, talks in Washington, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, during the announcement about one of the most violent events in the cosmos that was witnessed completely for the first time in August and tells scientists where gold and other heavy elements come from. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Scientists knew that the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. By using LIGO to measure gravitational waves while watching this event unfold, researchers came up with a new estimate for how fast that is happening, the so-called Hubble Constant. Before this, scientists came up with two slightly different answers using different techniques. The rough figure that came out of this event is between the original two, Reitze said.

The first optical images showed a bright blue dot that was very hot, which was likely the start of the heavy element creation process amid the neutron star debris, Drout said. After a day or two that blue faded, becoming much fainter and redder. And after three weeks it was completely gone, she said.

This almost didn't happen. Eight days after the signal came through, the LIGO gravitational waves were shut down for a year's worth of planned upgrades. A month later the whole area where the crash happened would have been blocked from astronomers' prying eyes by the sun.

Julie McEnery, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, during an announcement about one of the most violent events in the cosmos that was witnessed completely for the first time in August and tells scientists where gold and other heavy elements come from. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Scientists involved with the search for gravitational waves said this was the event they had prepared for over more than 20 years.

The findings are "of spectacular importance," said Penn State physicist Abhay Ashtekar, who wasn't part of the research. "This is really brand new."

Almost all of the discoveries confirmed existing theories, but had not been proven — an encouraging result for theorists who have been trying to explain what is happening in the cosmos, said France Cordova, an astrophysicist who directs the National Science Foundation.

"We so far have been unable to prove Einstein wrong," said Georgia Tech physics professor Laura Cadonati. "But we're going to keep trying."

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears . His work can be found here .

2017 Nobel Prize Winners Fly Through Microcosm "Like Google Earth for Molecules"

Richard Henderson, one of the 2017 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, holds a bacterio rhodopsin model prior to a press conference at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017. Three researchers based in the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for developments in electron microscopy. The 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize is shared by Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University and Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

NEW YORK (AP) — Three researchers won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for developing a microscope technique that lets scientists see exquisite details of the molecules that drive life — basically providing a front-row seat to study these tiny performers in their biological dance.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said molecules can be captured down to the level of their atoms, and snapshots can catch them in mid-movement. That can help reveal how they interact.

"This method has moved biochemistry into a new era," the academy said in awarding its chemistry prize to Switzerland's Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, German-born U.S. citizen Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University, and Briton Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

The detailed images may pave the way for developing new medicines, vaccines and industrial chemicals, but experts said such payoffs are largely in the future.

In this undated photo provided by the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, Richard Henderson, right and Carsten Sasche at work in a laboratory. Three researchers based in the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017 for developing a way to create detailed images of the molecules that drive life — a technology that the Nobel committee said allowed scientists to visualize molecular processes they had never previously seen. The 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize is shared by Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University and Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain. (Laboratory of Molecular Biology via AP)

"This is a technique that is just starting to find its way into the research community," said Allison A. Campbell, president of the American Chemical Society. It was recently used to reveal the structure of the Zika virus.

The method is called cryo-electron microscopy. It's like "Google Earth for molecules," Campbell said, because it "allows the scientist to zoom in down to the fine detail (giving) that fine resolution that you want to have."

Other methods have been used before to determine structures of some biological molecules, but they run up against fundamental limitations. The three winners of the $1.1 million (9 million kronor) prize adapted another technique, electron microscopy, which uses a beam of electrons rather than ordinary light to inspect samples.

Jacques Dubochet, University of Lausanne, one of the 2017 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry smiles before a press conference at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017. Three researchers based in the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for developments in electron microscopy. The 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize is shared by Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University and Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)

Between 1975 and 1986, Frank developed mathematical models to turn fuzzy two-dimensional images into sharp, three-dimensional ones. Henderson, in 1990, was able to generate a three-dimensional image of a protein at atom-level resolution, showing the technology's potential, the Nobel committee said.

Dubochet, in the early 1980s, found a way to cool the water in a biological sample so quickly that it solidified without forming the ice crystals that can disrupt the electron beam.

Those early advances were followed by others that have greatly improved the technique, the Nobel committee said.

"It's the first time that we can see biological molecules in their natural environment and how they actually work together down to the individual atoms," said Nobel chemistry committee member Heiner Linke.

Henderson said Dubochet "kicked off the field; he invented this method of making specimens we now use."

Speaking to reporters in Cambridge, England, Henderson also said he felt "the three of us have been awarded the prize acting on behalf of the entire field."

Joachim Frank, of Columbia University, speaks at a Columbia University press conference Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017, in New York. Frank shares this year's Nobel Chemistry Prize with two other researchers for developing a method to generate three-dimensional images of the molecules of life. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Frank said he was "fully overwhelmed" and speechless upon hearing he had won a share of the prize.

"I thought the chances of a Nobel Prize were minuscule because there are so many other innovations and discoveries that happen almost every day," he said.

He said he hasn't yet thought about what to do with the prize money, but added: "I was telling my wife that we don't have to worry about a dog sitter anymore."

The chemistry prize was the third Nobel announced this week.

From left, Sara Snogerup Linse, chairman of the Nobel Committee in Chemistry, Goran K. Hansson, secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and Peter Brzezinski, member of the Nobel Committee, sit during a press conference as they announce - Jacques Dubochet - from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, Joachim Frank from Columbia University, USA and Richard Henderson, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, in England as the winners of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry rewards researchers for major advances in studying the infinitesimal bits of material that are the building blocks of life. (Claudio Bresciani/TT News Agency via AP)

The medicine prize went to three Americans studying circadian rhythms: Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young. The physics prize went to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for detecting gravitational waves.

The literature winner will be named Thursday and the peace prize will be announced Friday.

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Jim Heintz reported from Stockholm. David Keyton in Stockholm, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Bob Lentz in Philadelphia contributed to this story.

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Follow the AP's coverage on the Nobels here.