Seeing the invisible: A real life Eye of Sauron?

“That’s the idea here: an all-seeing eye that can detect hazardous aerosols against a very crowded background of other substances”

05-Apr-2024 - Picture this disaster scenario in the making: At an industrial plant, a pipe cracks, spraying a cloud of tiny droplets into the air. Workers, however, are in luck. Within minutes, a laser-based device the size of a small suitcase spots the cloud and tells safety crews what’s in it so they know ...

Transgressing planetary boundaries: A crisis wake-up call for chemistry

An international group of scientists propose how chemistry can limit excessive biogeochemical flows and achieve sustainability

06-Oct-2022 - A paper just published in the journal Chemical Science calls for urgent attention to the crucial role that chemistry must play in tackling the multiple crises that are now unfolding due to the transgression of planetary boundaries. Nine boundaries, first proposed in 2009, define safe operating ...

Light amplification accelerates chemical reactions in aerosols

Temporal sequence of photochemical reaction in individual aerosol particles observed with high resolution

21-Apr-2022 - Aerosols in the atmosphere react to incident sunlight. This light is amplified in the interior of the aerosol droplets and particles, accelerating reactions. ETH researchers have now been able to demonstrate and quantify this effect and recommend factoring it into future climate models. Liquid ...

Aerosol researcher Yafang Cheng honored by Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2021

31-Aug-2021 - Dr. Yafang Cheng has been selected as one of the 10 winners of the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2021 in the category Physical Sciences for “Breaking the Wall to understanding COVID-19 transmission through aerosols”. “Top-class researchers globally are pushing the boundaries to ...

Particulates are more dangerous than previously thought

Harmful substances are already formed in the atmosphere, not just in the human body

24-Mar-2021 - Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have for the first time observed photochemical processes inside the smallest particles in the air. In doing so, they discovered that additional oxygen radicals that can be harmful to human health are formed in these aerosols under everyday ...

Oxidation processes in combustion engines and in the atmosphere take the same routes

25-Feb-2021 - Alkanes, an important component of fuels for combustion engines and an important class of urban trace gases, react via another reaction pathways than previously thought. These hydrocarbons, formerly called paraffins, thus produce large amounts of highly oxygenated compounds that can contribute to ...

An ultrafast glimpse of the photochemistry of the atmosphere

15-Oct-2019 - Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have explored the initial consequences of the interaction of light with molecules on the surface of nanoscopic aerosols. The nanocosmos is constantly in motion. All natural processes are ultimately determined by the interplay between ...

Smog laid bare: Precise analysis of the composition of particulate matter

22-May-2018 - Smog is a problem. But the knowledge about its constituents - no longer. Researchers from several leading Warsaw scientific institutions have joined forces and developed a new, extremely precise method for the chemical analysis of suspended particulate matter. The method, easily adaptable in many ...

Rapid pair production: Detection of a new reaction path in the atmosphere

04-Apr-2018 - Scientists have now observed a particularly rapid type of pair production in the laboratory: Hydrocarbons double when two peroxyl radicals react with each other. This means that stable products with the carbon skeleton of both peroxyl radicals are formed, which very likely will have a peroxide ...

A more complete picture of the nano world

28-Aug-2017 - They may be tiny and invisible, says Xiaoji Xu , but the aerosol particles suspended in gases play a role in cloud formation and environmental pollution and can be detrimental to human health. Aerosol particles, which are found in haze, dust and vehicle exhaust, measure in the microns. One micron ...