Existence Finally Confirmed of Hypothetical Particle That Could Help Cool the Planet
Criegee Biradicals Could Scrub Air Pollution from the Sky Gyre via WikimediaWelcome the Criegee biradical We can fit everything we knew before today about Criegee biradicals inside the period at the end of this sentence, but from what we understand they are pretty amazing. At least, that's the word from a team of researchers form the U. of Manchester, the U. of Bristol, and Sandia National Labs, who have just detected these invisible chemical intermediates for the first time. Apparently they can not only oxidize pollutants from combustion, cleaning up the atmosphere as they go, but they also contribute to cloud formation, helping to cool the planet. Criegee biradicals were first hypothesized in the 1950s by German chemist Rudolf Criegee, but at that point in time it was impossible to detect them or measure them, so it was unknown whether or not they truly existed and, if so, how fast...