Carbon

Researchers have created bacteria that can effectively eat air. By carefully directing the evolution of E. coli in the lab, the team managed to wean them off their preferred diet of sugar, and make the switch to carbon dioxide in the air around them.

Astronomers have detected complex carbon molecules – previously only thought to be made in a lab setting – in interstellar space. Now scientists have created them under space-like conditions, hinting at how they can naturally form between the stars.

During and after nuclear bomb tests, levels of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 spiked in the atmosphere and in our bodies. Now, researchers have used that to carbon date our immune cells, helping solve a mystery about how our immune systems age.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have refined a process that can detect modern fakes of paintings by measuring excessive levels of the isotope carbon-14 released into the atmosphere through nuclear testing in the 20th century.

New research led by the University of Cambridge has found that forests may not be as useful a carbon sink as we thought. The team found that a warming climate makes trees grow faster and die younger, releasing their captured carbon back into the air sooner.

​Do meal kits have a larger carbon footprint than regular grocery store shopping? A team of environmental researchers set out to crunch the numbers ​discovering that despite the extra plastic waste meal kits may produce less environmental emissions than conventional grocery shopping.

Scientists have discovered a tiny fragment of a comet in a meteorite. The bulk of the rock itself was once an asteroid, but when the team cracked it open and analyzed the inside, they found that the growing asteroid must have swept up the seed of a comet billions of years ago.

Capturing carbon from the air and sequestering it is emerging as a viable strategy, and now scientists have developed a new method to turn CO2 gas back into solid coal, that can then be buried, or even used for electronic components.

A study has found a huge new potential source of carbon emissions: reservoirs of gases trapped at the seafloor, which could be released as the oceans warm up. And the team suggests that these gases belched up from the deep thousands of years ago and put an end to the last ice age.

Fossil fuel-fired power plants will be pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for a long time to come. Now researchers at ORNL have developed a new substance that could effectively soak up carbon from coal-fired power plant emissions, using much less energy than existing methods.

Diamond is a useful material, but its relative rarity on Earth makes it difficult to get. Now, researchers at NCSU have demonstrated a new way to convert carbon nanofibers and nanotubes into diamond fibers that can be performed in a lab more easily than existing techniques.

Inspired by the ocean’s role as a natural carbon sink, researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Georgia Tech have developed a new system that absorbs CO2 and produces electricity and useable hydrogen fuel.