Oxygen-17, abundance discovery

Shortly after their discovery of lsO Giauque and Johnston (1929b) (see also Babcock (1929)) studied newer and more extensive data on the atmospheric absorption of sunlight. Here they found a band referred to as A" with band structure similar to the A and A bands but much weaker even than the A band. The spectral results agreed with the assignment of this band to the 17-16 02 molecule, and thereby they discovered the third and least abundant isotope of oxygen. 

The interest and activity in metal complex catalysis will continue to be marked by further advances in asymmetric catalysis and catalysis by solid metal complexes as well as in the discovery of new complexes capable of catalytically activating molecules such as hydrocarbons, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide in a manner that permits new uses for these abundant materials. 

Aluminum is the most abundant metal and the third most abundant element in the Earth s cmst, behind only oxygen and silicon. Its low weight and useful properties make aluminum and its alloys valuable materials for manufacturing and electrical applications. Inorganic compounds of aluminum are plentiful and used as absorbents, catalysts, ionic conductors, ceramics, and electrical materials. Organometalhc compounds of aluminum are also of great industrial importance and fundamental discoveries continue to be made regarding the variety of coordination numbers, structures, oxidation states, and reactivity exhibited by aluminum. ... 

A few informative properties of life come from easy category distinctions, such as the fact that all known life makes essential use of carbon and carbon-oxygen-nitrogen molecules in liquid water solution. The seemingly trivial observation that such carbaquist chemistry is ruled out if astrophysical carbon abundance lies below a certain threshold enabled Hoyle [1] to predict the 7.6 MeV carbon-12 ( C) nuclear resonance with remarkable precision because the discovery of the triple-alpha reaction synthesis of in stars happens to be a bottleneck for stellar nucleosynthesis of all the heavy elements. The pragmatic information in this prediction is easy to measure because it guided experimental characterization of nuclear structure where the existing computational capabilities could not. Similar sensitive dependence of the physical state of water has been used to define a habitable zone in planetary physics [10], which is not predictive in the same sense as carbon abundance (we already knew where the earth s orbit lies), but which creates a useful filter in the search for extraterrestrial life. 

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