Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Aaron Feaver's bio below. Humankind has seen the Stone Age, the Golden Age, and the Iron Age. Some would argue the 20th century should be called the Silicon ...

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, ...

Chemist and writer Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table—a memoir in the form of short stories about elements—closes with a chapter called “Carbon,” which tracks a single atom through time and space.

Which type of steel should you use? Alloy or carbon? This analysis explores both, highlighting their unique properties and ...

Just because carbon jumps off a bridge, doesn’t mean that tin will too. Scientists have conducted a simple experiment that attaches a simple hydrocarbon to triple-bonded tin atoms, violating a ...

Immediately after the Big Bang, before the first stars in the Universe ever formed, the Universe consisted of hydrogen (element #1), helium (element #2) and pretty much nothing else. Despite ...

In its purest form, iron is neither exceptionally strong nor hard - in fact, a block of pure iron could be cut with a knife. The addition of carbon and the removal of oxygen are what give iron-based ...

Immediately after the Big Bang, before the first stars in the Universe ever formed, the Universe consisted of hydrogen (element #1), helium (element #2), and pretty much nothing else. Despite ...

Steve Sherwood has received funding from ARC grants. Laurie Menviel is a Research Associate at the University of NSW You’ll doubtless have heard Australia is introducing a “carbon tax” this Sunday to ...

Scientists have developed inexpensive, oxidized carbon particles that extract radioactive metals from water. They said their materials may help purify contaminated waters stored after the Fukushima ...