{"id":241732,"date":"2026-07-28T20:58:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/carbon-bismuth-bonds-reveal-that-relativity-blurs-the-textbook-line-between-sigma-and-pi-bonds"},"modified":"2026-07-28T20:58:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:58:02","slug":"carbon-bismuth-bonds-reveal-that-relativity-blurs-the-textbook-line-between-sigma-and-pi-bonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/carbon-bismuth-bonds-reveal-that-relativity-blurs-the-textbook-line-between-sigma-and-pi-bonds","title":{"rendered":"Carbon\u2013bismuth bonds reveal that relativity blurs the textbook line between sigma and pi bonds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/carbon-bismuth-bonds-reveal-that-relativity-blurs-the-textbook-line-between-sigma-and-pi-bonds.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Brown University chemists have provided direct evidence that upends the textbook explanation of how triple chemical bonds work in heavy elements. In a study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aei1285\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Science<\/i>, the researchers show evidence that when atomic nuclei are sufficiently heavy, the principles described in Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity change the structure of triple bonds\u2014blurring the lines between the two separate types of bonds involved in textbook triple bonding.<\/p>\n<p>Using a technique called photoelectron spectroscopy, the Brown team showed bonds created by carbon and the heavy element bismuth have the telltale signature of relativistic bonds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis idea that relativity is important in heavy elements has been around since the 1970s,\u201d said Lai-Sheng Wang, a professor of chemistry at Brown and the study\u2019s corresponding author. \u201cBut we show direct spectroscopic evidence that what we learned in high school about chemical bonding isn\u2019t true in heavy elements.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brown University chemists have provided direct evidence that upends the textbook explanation of how triple chemical bonds work in heavy elements. In a study published in Science, the researchers show evidence that when atomic nuclei are sufficiently heavy, the principles described in Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity change the structure of triple bonds\u2014blurring the lines between [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241732","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}