ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

The expansion of natural gas infrastructure jeopardizes energy transition, as natural gas is not a bridge technology towards a 100 per cent renewable energy system as defined by the Paris Climate Agreement. The researchers have examined the natural gas issue from five perspectives and given gas a fairly poor climate balance, comparable to that of coal or oil. They recommend that politicians and scientists revise the current assumptions about natural gas.

Using a new method, scientists are better able to distinguish between mirror-image substances. This is important amongst others in drug development, because the two variants can cause completely different effects in the human body.

Physicists observed a strange new type of behavior in a magnetic material when it's heated up. The magnetic spins 'freeze' into a static pattern when the temperature rises, a phenomenon that normally occurs when the temperature decreases.

Scientists have developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.To help observe how the process works and how selective it is, the researchers used neutron scattering.