Synthetic Amber Fossils?

 

Sometimes scientists can't tell the difference between synthetic amber and real 

fossilized tree resin

Scientists are learning to make synthetic amber that can be indistinguishable from actual fossilized tree resin according to a NYTimes article (March 24, 2025) by Richard Fisher.  Citing an article in the journal "Scientific Reports" by researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago Fisher describes a process involving living tree resin, heat and pressure to yield a product similar in appearance to fossilized amber.  

The process resembles cooking a meal in a pressure cooker.  The process seems to have an effect similar to "diagenesis" which over millions of years can chemically transform biological materials in to rock.  While some of the synthetic samples were imperfect, a few had properties similar to amber fossils.  They were darkened, had fracture lines and were lustrous.  In some instances they appeared indistinguishable from fossilized amber.

The scientists hope to better understand the fossilization process and the effects it has on fossilized biomolecules.  This will facilitate a better understanding of the fossil record.

Amber forms by the free radical polymerization of several members of the labdane family of diterpenes and trienes.  These may differ among tree species.  With age the polymers grow and crosslink giving amber its characteristic translucent luster and smooth surface.  Further studies will be required to elucidate the biochemical details of actual fossilization processes.  

Particularly relevant to the chemical significance of these studies are the remarks quoted by Fisher of Maria McNamara, a paleontologist at University College Cork, Ireland, not involved in the study:

“What we really want to get a handle on is which resins polymerize faster,” she said. She also pointed out that a chemical analysis of the accelerated amber was necessary to know how close — or not — it was to the real stuff. “The tree resin has survived, but we need a proper, full chemical characterization,” she said.

Thus it turns out that chemistry is valuable in paleontology as it is in so many areas of science.

  

 

 

Government Agencies on the Source of the Covid 19 Virus

 

John Ratcliffe, new CIA Director

Julian E. Barnes reports in a New York Times piece of January 25, 2025 on the status of the debate in the intelligence community over the origins of the Covid 19 virus.  He reports that after years of asserting that insufficient information is available to draw conclusions the latest CIA assessment leans towards the "Lableak" theory as opposed to the theory that the virus originated naturally in a Wuhan animal market.

Citing "a senior intelligence official" Barnes reports that in the final weeks of the Biden administration Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, ordered a classified review of the pandemic's origins.  He instructed the analysts to take a position one way or the other.  It is this assessment that concluded that the virus somehow escaped one of the secure laboratories in Wuhan.  Ratcliffe who has long supported the Lableak theory made the decision to declassify the assessment.  The analysts' report says that the assessment is made with "low confidence" meaning that it is based on fragmentary and incomplete intelligence. Citing "intelligence officials" Barnes says that the assessment is not based on new intelligence but the result of reexamination of the same intelligence that has long been available.

Barnes says that "five agencies including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic." But that assessment was also made with low confidence.

Barnes also says the two agencies, the FBI and the Department of Energy, assessed a lab leak origin, but they disagree on which lab was the source of the leak.

Perhaps the crux of the matter is in the following that Barnes summarizes from conversations with senior Biden administration officials responsible for the new analysis:

These officials say that there are powerful logical arguments for both the lab leak and the natural causes theories, but that there simply is no decisive piece of intelligence on either side of the issue.

To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid.

Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic.

Neither piece of evidence has been found.

In principle decisive evidence might be found in files hidden in one of the Wuhan labs, but finding such a thing would challenge even a very aggressive CIA.  Barnes reports the "senior Biden administration officials" think if the problem is ever resolved it will be through a scientific breakthrough rather than an intelligence coupe.

While the pandemic could be a dramatic example of chemistry gone badly awry, Barnes reporting makes the assertion that science, implicitly chemical science, is the key to finding what went wrong.  In that sense it strengthens the notion that chemistry can do good or ill depending on how we use it.  That is, of course, the realistic and ultimately positive view we would like to see encouraged.

 

 

Cleaning up the water using chemistry

 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250331151253.htm

In this article, the chemical process they use involves adding granulated activated carbon, and superheating to 3000C to break down the forever chemical polyfluroalkyl substances, is not only able to clean certain types of plastic from water sources, but they can chemically convert it to grahene, which can be used in batteries, solar panels, and other electronics, repurposing the matter