One atom, four bonds: a single carbon stitches flat molecules into 3D structures - Asia Research News |

The Nobel prize in chemistry 2026 has been awarded to two scientists for discoveries that showed how chemical reactions can produce an overwhelming excess of one of two mirror image forms of a molecule. Henri B Kagan at Paris-Sud University in France and Kensō Soai at Tokyo University of Science in Japan have been awarded the prize “for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis”. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners in Stockholm, Sweden, on Wednesday. They will each receive an equal share of a prize of 12m Swedish kronor (about £900,000). Many molecules, including amino acids that form the building blocks of proteins, can exist in two forms that contain the same atoms, but are mirror images of one another, much like a person’s left and right hands. This property is known as chirality. However, the chemistry underpinning life is surprisingly “homochiral”, or same-handed. Proteins are built almost exclusively from L-amino acids, while the sugars that form the backbone of DNA and RNA have the opposite D- configuration.

An illustration showing a chip and DNA strands inside a water drop. Image credits: ZME Science To you or me, a tiny drop of water looks ordinary. There seems to be nothing special about it. However, some researchers see a whole computing device inside a drop. There is no silicon processor inside, but they claim that the billions of DNA molecules in a water drop can interact, process information, and produce an answer.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.