Science Snapshots: March 22, 2026

Oceans more than gases helped earth cool

When researchers recently analysed Antarctic ice cores to reconstruct the earth’s climate over the last three million years, they found that the world’s oceans cooled by 2.5 C, most of it around 2.7 million years ago. While methane levels were unchanged, those of carbon dioxide did so barely 2.9-1.2 million years ago. The findings suggest that factors like ocean circulation and ice sheet growth rather than gas levels alone primarily drove long-term cooling.

Nifty chemistry offers to make laundry cleaner

Researchers have made a fabric coating that offers to eliminate detergents from laundry. They sprayed alternating layers of compounds called PDADMAC and PVS onto textiles. The spray formed a dense layer that effectively repelled stains, residues, and germs, and could be washed off by rinsing under tap water. The team has estimated the technique could lower water and electricity use by 80% and also eliminate the discharge of detergent residues and microplastics in the wastewater.

New reaction to recover Li from battery waste

A new method called halometallurgy could recover lithium from Li-ion battery waste. First, the battery materials are heated to move lithium from the cathode into a mix of sodium and potassium chloride salts, breaking the cathode’s structure into transition metal oxides. As the salts melt, they coat the particles to create a barrier against oxygen, which allows graphite to reduce the oxides into metallic alloys. Finally, up to 96% of lithium is recovered in the saline solution.