Where is the proton? Yale scientists discover footprints of shared protons

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Two oxygen atoms on different molecules are connected by their mutual attraction to an extra proton shown as a fuzzy ball between them. The presence of such intermolecular binding can now be identified by monitoring the precise vibrational frequency ...
Two oxygen atoms on different molecules are connected by their mutual attraction to an extra proton, shown as a fuzzy ball between them. The presence of such intermolecular binding can now be identified by monitoring the precise vibrational frequency of the bridging proton. Credit: Yale University

This week in Science, Yale researchers present "roadmaps" showing that shared protons, a common loose link between two biological molecules, simply vibrate between the molecules as a local oscillator, rather than intimately entangling with the molecular vibrations of the attached molecules.


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