SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the mother-nature-beats-us-to-it-again dept.
A class of materials previously thought to be exclusively man-made has been discovered in coal mines:
One of the hottest new materials is a class of porous solids known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. These man-made materials were introduced in the 1990s, and researchers around the world are working on ways to use them as molecular sponges for applications such as hydrogen storage, carbon sequestration, or photovoltaics.
Now, a surprising discovery by scientists in Canada and Russia reveals that MOFs also exist in nature -- albeit in the form of rare minerals found so far only in Siberian coal mines.
The finding, published in the journal Science Advances, "completely changes the normal view of these highly popular materials as solely artificial, 'designer' solids," says senior author Tomislav Friščić, an associate professor of chemistry at McGill University in Montreal. "This raises the possibility that there might be other, more abundant, MOF minerals out there."
Minerals with metal-organic framework structures (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600621)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @10:32PM
More proof of Intelligent Design.
Checkmate, Atheists!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 09 2016, @11:16PM
Say it with me in Carl Sagan's voice: "Billions of Billions..." you don't even have to leave the planet to have an incredibly large, richly diverse array of basically anything that can happen. There were natural self-sustaining fission reactions in the Earth's crust long before Los Alamos figured out how to make it happen, why would it be strange to find MOFs in a place like a coal mine? Some coal apparently formed in the presence of metals, and here we go... more weird stuff, without human action required.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @04:21AM
More proof of my cock being too big for your ass. So much for "intelligent design".