GEPCS – Group of Spectroscopy of Plasmas and Supersonic Jets
Category : Cosmology General News
A radiotelescope array with instruments around the planet, including the Spanish participation in IRAM, produced an image of a black hole event horizon, as announced last April 10, 2019. The result comes after a decade long effort and new developments in millimeter-wave technology (230-450 GHz).
Category : Group News University
The team of our national project, including researchers from the Universities of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), La Rioja (UR) and Valladolid (UVa) met in Logrono last January 18 to follow the research results. A new project for the period 2019-21 has been proposed.
Category : Group News Molecular Structure MW Spectroscopy New Results!
An investigation on diphenyl disulfide has been highlighted in the cover of CPC. This collaboration with Jean Demaison and Natalja Vogt uses a combination of supersonic jet experimental data and high-level ab initio calculations for the precise determination of the equilibrium molecular structure. The cover features the biologically and industrially important disulfide bridge.
Category : General News
Jon T. Hougen passed away last January 28, 2018. A former senior researcher at NIST and Editor of Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, he was one of the best known international figures in the field of high-resolution spectroscopy and a permanent presence in international conferences worldwide. He will be remembered by his multiple contributions, including the treatment of large-amplitude motions and the development of permutation-inversion group theory. Two volumes of Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy were dedicated to him in 2017, on the ocassion of his 80th anniversary. Despite his official retirement in 2009 he never stopped contributing with new science. You can enjoy a video of Jon at the 60th ISMS Conference.
Category : Astrochemistry General News Planetary science
The end of 2018 and new year was full of space research news. In a very short time the Japanese Hayabusa2 touched an asteroid, the New Horizons spacecraft reached the Kuiper belt object Ultima Thule, and the Chinese probe Chang’e landed the Jade Rabbit 2 rover in the far side of the moon. The flyby of Ultima Thule is particularly interesting considering the distance of 6500 millions of km (equivalent to a radio attenuation of 303 dB at 7 GHz) and the fact that it was reached with about 35% of the remaining hydrazine fuel. New Horizons is expected to head towards another Kuiper object in the next years.
A rotational investigation of the aniline trimer was published in Angewandte Chemie. The work, done in collaboration with Cristobal Pérez (Hamburg) and Brooks Pate (Virginia), found three isomers of the aniline trimer and two isomers of the monohydrated dimer. The trimer is more complex than the analogue phenol trimer, where the stronger O-H···O interaction produce a single (symmetric) isomer. In the aniline trimer, stabilized by N-H···N and N-H···Pi, interactions one of the observed species is also a symmetric rotor.
Category : Group News
Following the 25th Conference on High Resolution Molecular Spectroscopy we received some visits at the lab. Prof. Pascal Dréan (PhLAM, Univ. Lille) and his Ph.D. student Mhamad Chrayteh visited the lab last September 10th. Later that week we welcomed Prof. Yasuki Endo (NCTU, Taiwan) and Dr. Cabezas (NCTU, now at the CSIC, Madrid).
In the picture below Marcos Juanes, Rizalina T. Saragi, Yasuki Endo, Carlos Cabezas and Alberto Lesarri.
Below, Rizalina, Marcos and Alberto with Pascal Dréan and Mhamad Chrayteh at the historial library of the UVa.
Category : Conferences Group News
Our group organized the last 25th International Conference on High Resolution Molecular Spectroscopy in collaboration with the University of the Basque Country. The Conference gathered about 270 participants and six companies, combining 126 oral talks and posters. Marcos Juanes and Rizalina Tama Saragi presented two oral talks and two posters. The conference included a talk by the Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach, who received the “Miguel Catalán” medal of the Group of Atomic and Molecular Physics (GEFAM) of the Spanish Chemistry (RSEQ) and Physics (RSEF) societies. The next Conference will be organized in Prague in 2020.
Marcos Juanes in the “Science Saloon” talking with Prof. Herschbach.
Rizalina T. Saragi and Prof. Herschbach.
Alberto Lesarri, Emilio J. Cocinero, Dudley Herschbach, Jens-Uwe Grabow and José A. Fernández following the award of the Catalán medal to Prof. Herschbach.
Category : Astrochemistry General News
An article in Nature reported the observation of astrophysically complex organic molecules (COMs) in cryo plumes ejected from the interior water ocean of Enceladus, one of Saturn satellites. The composition of the plumes was detected using mass spectrometry during a flyby of the spacecraft Cassini, before it was destroyed in 2017. Most of ice particles ejected from Enceladus are almost pure water, but a 1% is rich in organic molecules, some of them up to 200 amu. These results are the first evidence of complex organics from an extraterrestrial water ocean. The identity of these organic compounds is not clear, but they could contain carbon (C7 to C15), oxygen and eventually nitrogen. A prominent peak was associated to cationic forms of the benzene ring. Enceladus seems the only member of the solar system with a water ocean, an internal energy source and complex organics, apart from our planet.
Picture Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Southwest Research Institute
Category : Conferences Group News
Marcos Juanes attended the last International Symposium in Molecular Spectroscopy, which was organized by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Marcos presented two oral communications during the conference on the dimers of cyclohexanol and thenyl and furfuryl alcohol.
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