{"id":2144,"date":"2007-06-20T12:35:51","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T12:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2007\/06\/man-in-the-mirror-on-the-moon.html"},"modified":"2007-06-20T12:35:51","modified_gmt":"2007-06-20T12:35:51","slug":"man_in_the_mirror_on_the_moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2007\/06\/man_in_the_mirror_on_the_moon.html","title":{"rendered":"Man in the mirror (on the moon)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the words of my news editor, I’ve had a day geeking out on chemistry, and it’s been great. Two papers in Nature<\/em> this week about newsworthy chemistry (it’s all newsworthy, I hear you cry….).<\/p>\n

I’m not sure which was my favourite – as someone who did their masters degree doing organometallic synthesis in ionic liquids, I loved the latest application of the erstwhile green solvents – to support a liquid mirror on the moon. (News story here<\/a> and paper here<\/a>.) And the accompanying News and Views <\/a>article focuses on ionic liquids, rather than going to the moon (which my news piece hangs on). It was a bit of a leap of imagination for whoever thought about using ionic liquids in this way, but a great new application for them. I’m impressed. Of course, we have to colonise the moon first – a minor point.<\/p>\n

The second<\/a> news story from a second paper<\/a> was about another subject I have delved into in the past – biofuels (see feature<\/a>). This latest research effort uses acid-hydrolysis to turn fructose into 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, and then a ruthenium\/copper catalyst to turn that into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF<\/span>). DMF<\/span> has the potential to be a far, far better biofuel than ethanol. All that is required now is the funding to develop the processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the words of my news editor, I\u2019ve had a day geeking out on chemistry, and it\u2019s been great. Two papers in Nature this week about newsworthy chemistry (it\u2019s all newsworthy, I hear you cry\u2026.).  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}