{"id":106410,"date":"2020-05-02T16:44:23","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T23:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/first-direct-look-at-how-light-excites-electrons-to-kick-off-a-chemical-reaction"},"modified":"2020-05-02T23:30:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T06:30:03","slug":"first-direct-look-at-how-light-excites-electrons-to-kick-off-a-chemical-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/first-direct-look-at-how-light-excites-electrons-to-kick-off-a-chemical-reaction","title":{"rendered":"First direct look at how light excites electrons to kick off a chemical reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/first-direct-look-at-how-light-excites-electrons-to-kick-off-a-chemical-reaction3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The first step in many light-driven chemical reactions, like the ones that power photosynthesis and human vision, is a shift in the arrangement of a molecule\u2019s electrons as they absorb the light\u2019s energy. This subtle rearrangement paves the way for everything that follows and determines how the reaction proceeds.<\/p>\n<p>Now scientists have seen this first step directly for the first time, observing how the molecule\u2019s electron cloud balloons out before any of the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/atomic+nuclei\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">atomic nuclei<\/a> in the molecule respond.<\/p>\n<p>While this response has been predicted theoretically and detected indirectly, this is the first time it\u2019s been directly imaged with X-rays in a process known as molecular movie-making, whose ultimate goal is to observe how both electrons and nuclei act in real time when chemical bonds form or break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first step in many light-driven chemical reactions, like the ones that power photosynthesis and human vision, is a shift in the arrangement of a molecule\u2019s electrons as they absorb the light\u2019s energy. This subtle rearrangement paves the way for everything that follows and determines how the reaction proceeds. Now scientists have seen this first [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106435,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106410\/revisions\/106435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}