Earths atmosphere is a complicated dance of molecules2. The chemical output of plants, animals and human industry rise into the air and pair off in sequences of chemical reactions. Such processes help maintain the atmospheres chemical balance; for example, some break down pollutants3 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels. Understanding exactly how these reactions proceed is critical for predicting how the atmosphere will respond to environmental changes, but some of the steps of this dance are so quick that all of the molecules involved havent been measured in the wild.A University of Pennsylvania team has now observed one of these rapid atmospheric4 reactions in the lab. They identify an important intermediate molecule1 and track its transformation5 to hydroxyl radicals6, also demonstrating the amount of energy necessary for the reaction to take place.Their findings help explain how the atmosphere maintains its reserves of hydroxyl radicals, highly reactive molecules that are called the atmospheres detergent7.The study was led by Marsha Lester, professor of chemistry in Penns School of Arts Sciences, along with members of her lab: graduate student Fang8 Liu and postdoctoral researcher Joseph Beames. They collaborated9 with Andrew Petit, also a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry, and Anne McCoy, professor of chemistry at The Ohio State University.Their work was published in Science.
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1 molecule n.分子，克分子 参考例句： A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hygrogen and one atom of oxygen.一个水分子是由P妈f婘妈成的。 This gives us the structural formula of the molecule.这种方法给出了分子的结构式。
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