Scientists have performed the quantum version of creating energy out of thin air for their most recent magic performance. It's an accomplishment that seems to defy both logic and physical law.

The usual line of reasoning, according to William Unruh, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, is that "you can't take energy straight from the vacuum because there's nothing there to offer."
However, Masahiro Hotta, a theoretical scientist at Japan's Tohoku University, suggested 15 years ago that perhaps the void could be persuaded to give up something.

Here’s one more reason to love a good mushroom: one day, you might be able to make headphones, memory foam for shoes, or even aircraft exoskeletons with it. Researchers just assessed the engineering possibilities with one particularly impressive mushroom and found that it might be able to replace plastic in a whole bunch of different use cases.

Using mushrooms instead of plastic could cut down on the mountains of waste humans create. Plastics made out of fossil fuels are actually really difficult to recycle and usually wind up cluttering landfills, landscapes, and waterways. Materials made with mushrooms, on the other hand, would be biodegradable and could be reused at the end of a product’s life to make more of the same stuff.

Lunar astronauts might have to get their overalls ready, because the Moon could be the next great frontier for agriculture. The European Space Agency and Norwegian lunar agriculture company Solsys Mining have teamed up on a project to study how lunar soil could be used to produce fertilizer.

The project builds upon prior research demonstrating that plants can grow in lunar soil, albeit not very well. One of the main challenges is that lunar regolith lacks certain amounts of nitrogen compounds—a key ingredient in soil that allows flora to flourish. Another issue is that lunar soil gets tightly compact when wet, which creates trouble for plants trying to put down healthy and strong roots.

The team utilized a technique that they believe could speed up the drug discovery process in the production of lissodendoric acid A.

Organic chemists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have synthesized the first artificial form of a molecule found in a sea sponge, which holds potential therapeutic benefits for Parkinson’s disease and similar disorders. The molecule, named lissodendoric acid A, has the ability to counteract molecules that can harm DNA, RNA, proteins, and even destroy whole cells.

In a surprising turn, the research team utilized an unusual, long-neglected compound called a cyclic allene to control a critical stage in the chemical reactions required to create a usable form of the molecule in the laboratory. This breakthrough, according to the team, has the potential to be beneficial in the development of other complicated molecules for pharmaceutical studies.

Researchers have created a device that uses just solar energy to convert greenhouse gases and plastic trash into sustainable fuels and other useful items.

The device was created by researchers from the University of Cambridge, and it is the first solar-powered reactor to be able to simultaneously transform two waste streams into two chemical products.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and polymers are transformed in the reactor into a variety of products that are helpful in a variety of sectors. In experiments, CO2 was transformed into syngas, a crucial component of sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles into glycolic acid, a substance used extensively in the cosmetics sector. By altering the catalyst utilized in the reactor, the system is easily tweaked to yield different products.

Researchers at University College London and the University of Cambridge have discovered a new type of ice that more closely resembles liquid water than any other known ices and that may rewrite our understanding of water and its many anomalies.

The newly discovered ice is amorphous — that is, its molecules are in a disorganized form, not neatly ordered as they are in ordinary, crystalline ice. Amorphous ice, although rare on Earth, is the main type of ice found in space. That is because, in the colder environment of space, ice does not have enough thermal energy to form crystals.