Iron
hideIron (pronounced /ˈаɪ.ərn/) is a chemical element with the symbol Fe (Latin: ferrum) and atomic number 26. Iron is a group 8 and period 4 element. Iron and iron alloys (steels) are by far the most common metals and the most common ferromagnetic materials in everyday use. Fresh iron surfaces are lustrous and silvery-grey in colour, but oxidise in air to form a red or brown coating of ferrous oxide or rust. Pure single crystals of iron are soft (softer than aluminium), and the addition of minute amounts of impurities, such as carbon, significantly strengthens them. Alloying iron with appropriate small amounts (up to a few per cent) of other metals and carbon produces steel, which can be 1,000 times harder than pure iron.
Iron-56 is the heaviest stable isotope produced by the alpha process in stellar nucleosynthesis; heavier elements than iron and nickel require a supernova for their formation. Iron is the most abundant element in the core of red giants, and is the most abundant metal in iron meteorites and in the dense metal cores of planets such as Earth.
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News tagged with iron
Sandtrapped Rover Makes a Big Discovery
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Dec 03, 2009 |
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Homer's Iliad tells the story of Troy, a city besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War. Today, a lone robot sits besieged in the sands of Troy while engineers and scientists plot its escape.
Scientists develop new cancer-killing compound from salad plant
Oct 13, 2008 |
4.8 / 5 (56) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Washington have updated a traditional Chinese medicine to create a compound that is more than 1,200 times more specific in killing certain kinds of cancer cells than currently ...
New theory for latest high-temperature superconductors
Aug 13, 2008 |
3.9 / 5 (52) |
1
Physicists from Rice and Rutgers universities have published a new theory that explains some of the complex electronic and magnetic properties of iron "pnictides." In a series of startling discoveries this spring, pnictides ...
Machine Converts CO2 into Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel
Nov 23, 2009 |
4.4 / 5 (45) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun's energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, ...
'Single-Crystal' Superconductors are a Big Step for the Field
Aug 28, 2008 |
4.7 / 5 (33) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In key advances for the field of superconductivity, a research group has created versions of a class of widely studied superconducting compounds that are each one continuous crystal, rather ...
New insights into centre of the Earth
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 15, 2008 |
4.4 / 5 (30) |
2
A new observation of the very deepest part of the Earth, the solid inner core, has been reported this week in Nature. The team from the University of Bristol also observed intriguing evidence of a ‘texture’ in the ...
Ancient ecosystem thrives millions of years below Antarctic glacier
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Apr 16, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (24) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A reservoir of briny liquid buried deep beneath an Antarctic glacier supports hardy microbes that have lived in isolation for millions of years, researchers report this week in the journal ...
Single-Molecule Magnets Open New Door for Information Technology
Mar 09, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (24) |
2
(PhysOrg.com) -- Recent research by scientists in Italy and France shows that that single molecules have the ability to store information via their magnetic state. Their work is a first step toward a new generation ...
Cutting calories could limit muscle wasting in later years
Sep 16, 2008 |
4.7 / 5 (21) |
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Chemical concoctions can smooth over wrinkles and hide those pesky grays, but what about the signs of aging that aren't so easy to fix, such as losing muscle mass? Cutting calories early could help, say University of Florida ...
Hybrid Nanoparticles Image and Treat Tumors
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
Sep 26, 2008 |
4.6 / 5 (21) |
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- By combining a magnetic nanoparticle, a fluorescent quantum dot, and an anticancer drug within a lipid-based nanoparticle, a multi-institutional research team headed by members of the National Cancer Institute’s ...
Funerary monument reveals Iron Age belief that the soul lived in the stone
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Nov 18, 2008 |
4.7 / 5 (20) |
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from ...
Rapid supernova could be new class of exploding star
Nov 05, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (18) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An unusual supernova rediscovered in seven-year-old data may be the first example of a new type of exploding star, possibly from a binary star system where helium flows from one white dwarf ...
Graphite mimics iron's magnetism
Oct 04, 2009 |
4.6 / 5 (17) |
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Researchers of Eindhoven University of Technology and the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands show for the first time why ordinary graphite is a permanent magnet at room temperature. The results ...
Study Yields Surprising New Insight into High-Temp Superconductors
Mar 17, 2009 |
4.8 / 5 (16) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Recently, an international group of researchers discovered that the underlying mechanism producing high-temperature superconductivity in a widely studied class of copper-oxygen-based superconductors may be ...
Banded rocks reveal early Earth conditions, changes
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Oct 11, 2009 |
4.8 / 5 (16) |
1
(PhysOrg.com) -- The strikingly banded rocks scattered across the upper Midwest and elsewhere throughout the world are actually ambassadors from the past, offering clues to the environment of the early Earth ...
