Scientists use microwaves to unravel the exact structure of a tiny molecular motor. The nano-machine consists of just a single molecule, made up of 27 carbon and 20 hydrogen atoms (C27H20).
Double-resonance rotational spectroscopy identifies not only which transitions in complex spectra share common energy levels but also how these transitions are connected, i.e. the energetic ordering of the levels.
An international group of scientists around Melanie Schnell from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter and Harvard performed the first chirality-sensitive broadband microwave spectroscopic analysis of a chiral mixture.