Basic Chemistry

At Givaudan and IFF, chemists build—and safeguard—new aroma molecules tightly linked to emotion and memory

Science writer Hanne Strager explores how the trailblazing Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann overcame self-doubt to discover that Earth has a solid inner core, overturning the long-held belief that it was liquid

A team at IBM Research has assembled a strange new ring-shaped molecule that bends around like a more complicated Möbius strip

There’s a scientific reason your OJ tastes funny after you brush your teeth

Ice has many forms beyond the mundane stuff produced in a standard freezer

Biomining uses engineered microbes to harvest critical minerals

A deep-sea worm that lives in hydrothermal vents is the first known animal to create orpiment, a toxic, arsenic-containing mineral that was used by artists for centuries

An attosecond—or 0.000000000000000001 second—is no time at all for a person. That is not so for electrons, atoms and molecules, and laser-wielding scientists are revealing the action

Electric vehicles leave behind mountains of dead lithium-ion batteries. A new “injection” brings them back to life

Opt for lighter, cheaper wine to dodge headaches this holiday season

New research harnessed the highly absorbent dye tartrazine, used as the common food coloring Yellow No. 5, to turn tissues in living mice clear—temporarily revealing organs and vessels inside the animals

A novel way of making superheavy elements could soon add a new row to the periodic table, allowing scientists to explore uncharted atomic realms