Physicists Solve a 50-Year Mystery About a Critically Important Molecule
An electric dipole moment is a measure of polarity—a crucial determinant for many physical properties of any system, such as its boiling point or solubility. Given its importance, the new result, published last month in Physical Review A, presents exciting opportunities for applications across a wide range of fields, from quantum computing to astrophysics.
At our core, we're all made of molecules. Anything we do—whether it's picking up a cup of coffee or digesting coffee after taking a sip—can be explained in terms of molecular interactions. This is of obvious interest to scientists, and for a host of reasons. For one, knowing how different molecules interact either with each other or with their environment can reveal a lot about their respective characteristics, akin to how physicists study different particles using large particle colliders.
But another reason is that the interaction itself—in this case, the dipole moment—helps scientists understand completely different systems in unexpected ways. 'In chemistry, dipole moments affect everything from bonding behavior to solvent interactions,' said Boerge Hemmerling, a physicist at the University of California (UC), Riverside, and paper co-author, in a statement. 'In biology, they influence phenomena like hydrogen bonding in water. In physics and astronomy, the dipole moments can be harnessed to make neighboring molecules interact, for instance, with the goal to create a quantum entanglement between them.'
The dipole moment of AlCl, in particular, shows promise across a wide range of applications, added Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at UC Riverside and study co-author, in the same statement. 'Accurate dipole moment data improves how we interpret molecular signatures in starlight,' said Kane. 'The ratio of aluminum to chlorine in stars, as revealed through AlCl measurements, provides critical clues to stellar nucleosynthesis and the material history of these celestial bodies.'
For the experiment, Hemmerling and his team built a customized laser vacuum system they had been developing for more than seven years, enabling them to perform high-precision spectroscopy. They generated beams of AlCl in a vacuum inside the setup, picking apart the molecule to better understand its chemical underpinnings and behavior. Eventually, they arrived at the value of 1.68 Debye (the unit for measuring dipole moments) for the dipole moment of AlCl.
It may seem strange that such a fundamental number took nearly a century to lock down, but it turns out the estimate was really close. In 1956, chemist David R. Lide estimated the dipole moment of AlCl at 1.5 Debye—a mere 0.18 Debye away from Hemmerling's result. The closeness demonstrates the validity of existing theoretical models while also offering some clues as to how the accuracy can be improved even further, Hemmerling said in the same statement.
'From improving our understanding of distant stars to enabling next-generation quantum computers, the precise measurement of AlCl's electric dipole moment is a foundational step toward unlocking future discoveries,' Hemmerling said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
2 days ago
- Fox News
At-home test works like coffee rings to spot serious illness faster
Have you ever noticed how a spilled cup of coffee leaves behind a telltale brown ring? While those stains might be annoying, the science behind them, known as the coffee ring effect, has sparked innovations in health technology. UC Berkeley researchers recently turned this everyday phenomenon into a breakthrough medical test, making rapid and reliable disease detection as easy as brewing your morning coffee. Curious how a simple coffee stain could inspire cutting-edge diagnostics and revolutionize at-home testing? Let's look at how a forgotten mug on your desk might just save lives. Ever wondered why spilled coffee, wine or tea dries in a ring rather than evenly? This common pattern is known as the "coffee ring effect." The phenomenon occurs because of the liquid's surface tension. As the drop begins to dry, water at the edges evaporates more quickly since that area is thinner. To keep up, liquid from the center flows outward, carrying tiny particles with it. Once the drop is completely dry, these particles settle along the edge, creating the signature ring stain you see on tables and countertops every day. Surprisingly, that annoying coffee ring on your table has inspired a major breakthrough in medical technology. Researchers at UC Berkeley transformed this everyday nuisance into a powerful new at-home diagnostic test. This innovative test can identify diseases like COVID-19, prostate cancer and sepsis with remarkable accuracy. In fact, it is up to 100 times more sensitive than many current rapid tests. Even better, it delivers results in just twelve minutes, depending on the test. The idea began with Kamyar Behrouzi, a former Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. While developing a COVID-19 biosensor in 2020, he noticed that virus particles, much like coffee particles, tend to gather at the edge of a droplet. By using this natural effect, the researchers designed a test that captures and concentrates disease markers, making detection much easier. Thanks to this stain-inspired science, fast and reliable testing is now possible right at home. So, how does this innovative test actually work? First, you place a small sample from your nose or cheek onto a special membrane. As the sample dries, disease proteins concentrate at the edges to form a visible ring. Next, you add a second droplet containing light-reactive particles. If certain disease biomarkers are present, these nanoparticles light up when exposed to light. You can see positive results with the naked eye in some cases, or verify them more accurately using a special AI-powered smartphone app. This rapid test does more than detect COVID-19. It can also identify early signs of sepsis, a life-threatening infection that needs quick treatment. To make home testing accessible, the UC Berkeley team even created a 3D-printed prototype for easy use on your kitchen counter. According to professor Liwei Lin, this innovative approach could transform regular health screening, with no lab visit required. This coffee ring-inspired test brings hospital-level disease detection right to your home. With results ready in under twelve minutes, you can quickly check for diseases like COVID-19 and even early signs of sepsis. You no longer need to schedule lab visits or wait days for results. Instead, you can take charge of your health from the comfort of your kitchen, using a simple, affordable tool that could catch problems early and help keep your family safe. As technology like this becomes widely available, routine screening could become as easy as making your morning coffee. It's incredible how a common coffee stain inspired a breakthrough in medical testing. Science proves that even life's little messes can spark big innovations. With these advances, you can look forward to faster, easier health checks at home and maybe appreciate your next coffee spill just a little more. Would you trust a coffee stain to help catch disease early? Let us know by writing us at Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportGet my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
Forbes
3 days ago
- Forbes
Study Sheds Light On The Origins Of Giant Salt Formations
Outcrops with thick salt deposits in Sicily. While wandering along the cliffs of the Mediterranean Sea — particularly in southern Italy and Sicily — one might come across outcrops composed entirely of thick layers of salt and gypsum. Thanks to geophysical surveys and an extensive drilling campaign conducted during the Glomar Challenger expedition, we now know that these salt layers extend beneath the Mediterranean Sea and, in some regions, reach thicknesses of up to 2.5 kilometers. Such deposits can only form by evaporating large amounts of seawater. For almost 200 years scientists wondered how this was possible, and one unique salt lake — the Dead Sea in Israel — may provide an answer. 'These large deposits in the earth's crust can be many, many kilometers horizontally, and they can be more than a kilometer thick in the vertical direction,' says UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Eckart Meiburg, lead author of a new study. 'How were they generated? The Dead Sea is really the only place in the world where we can study the mechanism of these things today.' Salinity levels in the Dead Sea are famously so high that only few organisms can survive in its waters, giving it its name. Indeed, while there are other bodies of water in the world with high salinity levels, only in the Dead Sea they form massive salt deposits, which allows researchers to tackle the physical processes behind their evolution, and in particular, the spatial and temporal variations in their thickness. In their study, Meiburg and fellow author Nadav Lensky of the Geological Survey of Israel cover the fluid dynamics and associated sediment transport processes currently governing the Dead Sea. In 2019, the researchers observed a rather unique process occurring in the lake during the summer. While evaporation was increasing the salinity of the water on the surface, salts washed into the lake were nonetheless continuing to dissolve due to its warmer temperature. As the dense, salt-rich water sinks to the ground, it mixes with cooler water rising upwards. At the interface between the two layers, halite (common salt) crystals start to grow. The heavy crystals fall to the bottom, forming a sort of 'salt snow' covering the bottom of the Dead Sea basin. Detail of the outcrop showing single salt and gypsum crystals. In addition to other factors including internal currents and surface waves, this process is highly effective in creating salt deposits of various shapes and sizes, the authors conclude. In contrast to shallower hypersaline bodies in which precipitation and deposition occur during the dry season, in the Dead Sea salt formation occurs during the entire year. About 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago tectonic forces closed off the Strait of Gibraltar, reducing the inflow from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean basin and creating conditions similar to the Dead Sea basin — but on a vastly larger scale. 'The sea level dropped 3 to 5 kilometers (2-3 miles) due to evaporation, creating the same conditions currently found in the Dead Sea and leaving behind the thickest of this salt crust that can still be found buried below the deep sections of the Mediterranean,' Meiburg explains. 'But then a few million years later the Strait of Gibraltar opened up again, and so you had inflow coming in from the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean filled up again.' The full study, "Fluid Mechanics of the Dead Sea," was published in the journal Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics and can be found online here. Additional material and interviews provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
These two cancer drugs may help lower your risk of Alzheimer's disease, study shows
Scientists have identified two cancer drugs that may also lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease as they search for some way to lower its impact on an aging population. In a study published on Monday in the medical journal Cell, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, combed through more than 1,300 candidate drugs — from antipsychotics to antibiotics — for anything that could help alleviate the incurable condition. Only 90 of those drugs targeted the brain cell genes thought to influence Alzheimer's, and of those only five showed evidence of actually reducing the risk of Alzheimer's in human patients. The scientists then chose letrozole, designed to fight breast cancer, and irinotecan, intended for treating colon and lung cancer, to test on mice. 'We didn't expect cancer drugs to come up," study co-author Marina Sirota told NBC News. In fact, the two drugs used in combination did appear to improve memory and brain function in aging mice who had begun to show signs of dementia. The effects still need to be proven in human studies (PA Wire) That result still needs to be tested in humans, and the drugs may prove less effective in humans. Still, the finding is significant because pharmaceutical companies have so far struggled to develop purpose-built drugs for the disease. "Developing a new drug can take hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars, on average take more than ten years," said study co-author Dr. Yadong Huang. "For this repurposed drug, usually it just takes two or three years, and then you can go to the clinical trial and the cost is much, much lower. "We still haven't generated or produced any very effective drugs that can really slow dramatically the cognitive decline," he added. Over seven million Americans live with Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association, including 1 in 9 people aged over 65. The number is only likely to grow as the average age of the U.S. population continues to climb, with care costs for people with dementia projected to grow from $384 billion in 2025 to nearly $1 trillion by 2050.
