Despite their charm and allure, diamonds are rarely perfect. They have tiny defects that, to assistant professor Nathalie de Leon, make them ever so appealing. These atom-sized mistakes have enormous potential in technologies for high-resolution imaging and secure communication lines. (more…)
Geologists are letting the air out of a nagging mystery about the development of animal life on Earth.
Scientists have long speculated as to why animal species didn’t flourish sooner, once sufficient oxygen covered the Earth’s surface. Animals began to prosper at the end of the Proterozoic period, about 800 million years ago — but what about the billion-year stretch before that, when most researchers think there also was plenty of oxygen? (more…)
