Imagine you had a crystal ball that revealed when a volcano would next erupt. For the hundreds of millions of people around the world who live near active volcanoes, it would be an extremely useful ...

In a surprising twist, researchers have identified crystals that are symmetrical but nevertheless absorb light as if they were chiral (Science 2025, DOI: 10.1126/science.adr5478). The discovery ...

Nitrenes are the ghosts of synthetic chemistry, formed in an instant and gone just as quickly, rearranging into something ...

A new theory 'demystifies' the crystallization process and shows that the material that crystallizes is the dominant component within a solution -- which is the solvent, not the solute. The theory ...

The people at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History were nice enough to give a couple members of the Chemistry in Pictures team a behind-the-scenes look at their mineral ...

Going back through time, cultures around the world—from ancient Sumer to Indus Valley, China, and South America—have believed crystals could evoke a kind of sorcery, conjure change, and heal disease.

Crystal polymorphism is critically important in the fields of pharmaceuticals and materials science. For instance, a metastable polymorph of an active pharmaceutical ingredient may benefit from ...

Crystals -- from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds -- don't always grow in a straightforward way. Researchers have now captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures. In ...

Almost every material expands when heated. Well-known examples include railroad tracks and concrete roadways, which feature visible expansion gaps to accommodate this effect. However, thermal ...

While it may not look like it, the interstellar space between stars is far from empty. Atoms, ions, molecules, and more reside in this ethereal environment known as the Interstellar Medium (ISM). The ...

An artificial intelligence created by Google DeepMind may help revolutionise materials science, providing new ways to make better batteries, solar panels, computer chips and many more vital ...