NIST expands its library of ‘chemical fingerprints’ to identify unknown substances
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 9-Jun-2026 19:15 ET (9-Jun-2026 23:15 GMT/UTC)
NIST has added tens of thousands of new items to its largest library of chemical fingerprints, now totaling hundreds of thousands of compounds.Researchers and manufacturers rely on the library to identify unknown compounds in food, drugs, cosmetics, the environment, body fluids, forensic evidence and even space rocks.
The age of the impact, measured in a lunar meteorite found in Africa, lines up with the age of impacts also found on Earth and in the asteroid belt, connecting key parts of the inner solar system’s history
A brief review highlights topological aspects of black hole thermodynamics and universal topological classifications of black holes.
For over a century, doctors have used electrocardiograms (EKGs) to render the invisible electrical activity of the human heart visible, using the pulse to diagnose disease before it becomes fatal. Now, scientists have invented a way to do the exact same thing for the places where most of humanity lives: cities.
In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have introduced the concept of the “Urban Pulse.” By using dense, high-frequency satellite imagery, the team has successfully tracked the dynamic, real-time metabolic activity of urban environments, effectively measuring the heartbeat of a city.
Scientists detected a quasar flickering from the very early universe, a time known as the “cosmic dawn,” just 850 million years after the Big Bang. This is the earliest flickering quasar detected to date.