Milky seas are a rare bioluminescent phenomenon where vast areas of the ocean glow at night, sometimes for months. This glow, likely caused by Vibrio harveyi bacteria, has been reported by sailors for centuries but remains poorly understood due to its rarity and remote locations, mainly in the Indian Ocean. Researchers at Colorado State University have compiled a 400-year database of sightings, using historical records and satellite data, revealing that milky seas are linked to climatic patterns like the Indian Ocean Dipole and El Niño.

Iron and its alloys, such as steel and cast iron, dominate the modern world, and there’s growing demand for iron-derived products. Traditionally, blast furnaces transform iron ore into purified elemental metal, but the process requires a lot of energy and emits air pollution. Now, researchers in ACS Energy Letters report that they’ve developed a cleaner method to extract iron from a synthetic iron ore using electrochemistry, which they say could become cost-competitive with blast furnaces.

Coupling reactions are essential in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and advanced materials, but traditional methods often rely on costly and environmentally taxing transition metal catalysts. Now, researchers from Japan have reviewed emerging transition metal-free alternatives that align better with green chemistry principles. Their study highlights hypervalent iodine-mediated coupling, a strategy that enables selective bond formation without rare metals. By leveraging diaryliodonium salts, this approach can greatly enhance efficiency and reduce waste in coupling reactions.

Several prominent phenomena of condensed matter, exemplified by nonlinear transport, flat-band superconductivity, and fractional Chern insulators, are systematically reviewed with a focus on their quantum geometric origins.