Amber is known to be of the most beautiful gemstones and its mysterious qualities were enough to inspire myths and legends many years ago, and the fossilized tree resin still manages to lock away secrets today. However, scientists have now solved one of the many mysteries that have been under speculation for decades now. Their report on a key aspect of the gemstone’s architecture appears in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry.
Jennifer Poulin and Kate Helwig from the Canadian Conservation Institute say that a lot of the amber we see today originated million of years ago, when it exuded from trees and proceeded to fossilize over time. Some of the oldest examples of amber predate the beginnings of the dinosaurs and even has the potential to outlast the latest and most advanced materials made by scientists today. It is the extreme durability that has made the amber’s internal structure so difficult to comprehend. Scientists have used one specific technique to probe the inner molecular architecture of the ancient resin, but the process seemed to destroy evidence of certain relationships between compounds. This made Poulin and Helwig to attempt a different approach.
Building on past attempts using pyrolysis-gas chromotatogrpahy-mass spectrometry, they slowed down the pyrolysis phase, which fundamentally uses heat to break down a substance. By doing this, the researchers were able to demonstrate that specific groups of atoms within their samples were bound to succinic, known historically as “spirit of amber.” “There can be no doubt that much of the stability and durability of certain kinds of amber comes from the succinic acid cross-linking within the matrix,” the researchers said.
Contributing Source: American Chemical Society
Header Image Source: WikiPedia
