Where would carbon-based life be without carbon? There are 118 known chemical elements, but carbon is the fourth most abundant and perhaps the most important to human life. Everywhere you look, ...

The bonds between clusters of elements in the fourteenth group of the periodic table are known to be fickle. Ranging from the nonmetal carbon, to the metalloids silicon and germanium, to the metals ...

Carbon is the most important part of our life and is the third most abundant element besides hydrogen and helium.

Whenever conversations turn to the chemistry of life, carbon tends to dominate the discussion, and rightfully so. Every ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Robert Hazen is one of five expert speakers ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Using NASA’s Spitzer Telescope, an international research team has found evidence that some stars in the center of the Milky Way galaxy have both carbon and oxygen in the dust that ...

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After two decades of debate, scientists are getting closer to figuring out exactly what the sun — and thus the whole universe — is made of. The sun is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. There are ...

A small but mighty microbe that can safely extract the rare earth and other critical elements for building everything from satellites to solar panels has another superpower: capturing carbon dioxide.