Special relativity can warp chemical bonds – now we've seen it happen ⁠11%

By #author.fullName}⁠0% Karmela Padavic-Callaghan⁠0%

7/9/2026, 11:00:13 AM

Keywords: Chemistry

BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Slippery Slope, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 19.5% saturation with 130 hits. Analysis detected 786 faulty-reasoning hits from 667 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.1% and a BS Rank of ⁠11% (19,481 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 89.00% of the article peer group.

In some heavy atoms, like those of bismuth (pictured in crystalline form), electrons move at relativistic speeds 
savva_25/Shutterstock 
Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity can reshape chemical bonds within molecules, and researchers have just seen it happen for the first time. 
The theory of special relativity describes how moving at speeds close to the speed of light would affect travellers’ experience of space and time. 
Because of this, it is usually associated with particle accelerators and spacefaring objects, but within some heavy atoms, electrons experience relativistic speeds too. 
Chemists discovered the first new chemical bond in more than a decade 
Lai-Sheng Wang at Brown University in Rhode Island and his colleagues have now managed to take an unprecedented look at how this breaks the standard notion of chemical bonds within a charged molecule made from bismuth and carbon. 
Within the molecule, a bismuth atom and a carbon atom were connected by three bonds, one of which the researchers expected to be of “sigma” type and two of “pi” type. 
The difference between these two types stems from electrons’ quantum character – each electron is “smeared” across some region of space, instead of being a tight ball, and whether these regions overlap head on or side by side determines the type of chemical bond they create between the atoms. 
In their experiment, Wang and his colleagues mapped the distribution of electrons throughout the molecule, effectively getting a look at its bonds. 
But instead of seeing electrons distributed in shapes associated with sigma and pi bonds, the team noticed that two of the bonds resembled two different mixes of sigma and pi shapes. 
“Their characters are different from our normal understanding,” says Wang. 
“You can’t really call it the sigma and pi.” 
His team turned to Kirk Peterson at Washington State University, whose calculations ultimately showed that this mixing was a consequence of electrons near the bismuth nucleus feeling such a strong electromagnetic interaction that they moved at relativistic speeds. 
He says this effect hadn’t previously been captured in an experiment. 
“The hardest thing about [studying] heavy elements is a lack of really good experimental data,” says Peterson. 
“To have such a beautiful experiment to be able to essentially compare very high-level theory to data is really a luxury.” 
Wang says one important part of the new experiment is that he and his colleagues could make the molecule very cold before looking at its electrons. 
This dampened any jitters and excitations that would have made the final images imprecise. 
A new version of the periodic table could change how we measure time 
“The methods they have used, both experimental and theoretical, are the best possible ones,” says Pekka Pyykkö at the University of Helsinki in Finland. 
He says this relativistic reshaping of bismuth’s bonding with carbon could influence how organic bismuth compounds are used in chemical reactions. 
In fact, a recent study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Germany has already shown that relativistic effects help make this heavy metal a good catalyst of chemical processes. 
Wang says the researchers now want to repeat their experiment but swap bismuth for elements close to it in the periodic table, so they can see when exactly special relativity makes the traditional chemical bond structure collapse. 
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Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 5.1%#author.fullName}: 1.7%New Scientist: 1.8%Confirmation Bias5.1%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 1.8%New Scientist: 1.0%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 3.1%#author.fullName}: 2.1%New Scientist: 2.1%Availability Heuristic3.1%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.4%New Scientist: 0.5%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 3.4%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.2%Hindsight Bias3.4%This article: 6.4%#author.fullName}: 2.9%New Scientist: 2.6%Overconfidence Bias6.4%This article: 5.1%#author.fullName}: 4.3%New Scientist: 5.8%Framing Effect5.1%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.3%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 1.6%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.2%Status Quo Bias1.6%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 19.5%#author.fullName}: 7.2%New Scientist: 6.6%Optimism Bias19.5%This article: 1.5%#author.fullName}: 1.6%New Scientist: 0.6%Pessimism Bias1.5%This article: 4.0%#author.fullName}: 3.9%New Scientist: 1.9%Negativity Bias4.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.2%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.1%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.4%New Scientist: 0.1%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.6%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.3%New Scientist: 0.1%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 3.1%#author.fullName}: 1.0%New Scientist: 7.3%Halo Effect3.1%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 1.3%#author.fullName}: 0.9%New Scientist: 0.4%Recency Bias1.3%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.3%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.3%New Scientist: 0.2%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Straw Man0.0%This article: 12.1%#author.fullName}: 8.4%New Scientist: 13.9%Appeal to Authority12.1%This article: 1.5%#author.fullName}: 0.8%New Scientist: 0.9%False Dilemma1.5%This article: 11.8%#author.fullName}: 1.6%New Scientist: 0.6%Slippery Slope11.8%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.1%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 1.0%#author.fullName}: 2.8%New Scientist: 3.2%Hasty Generalization1.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.7%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 6.6%#author.fullName}: 2.6%New Scientist: 5.1%Appeal to Emotion6.6%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.7%New Scientist: 0.9%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 7.8%#author.fullName}: 2.3%New Scientist: 1.4%Post Hoc (False Cause)7.8%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 1.6%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.1%Burden of Proof1.6%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.1%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.1%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 3.3%#author.fullName}: 0.8%New Scientist: 0.8%Anecdotal3.3%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 9.6%#author.fullName}: 1.0%New Scientist: 1.0%Ambiguity (Equivocation)9.6%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.1%New Scientist: 0.0%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 1.5%#author.fullName}: 0.1%New Scientist: 0.0%Personal Incredulity1.5%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.2%New Scientist: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 1.2%New Scientist: 0.6%Unattributed Quote0.0%This article: 6.4%#author.fullName}: 0.5%New Scientist: 0.4%Quote-first Misdirection6.4%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 2.1%New Scientist: 3.7%Biased Writer Voice0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.6%New Scientist: 1.9%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 0.0%New Scientist: 0.0%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%#author.fullName}: 1.8%New Scientist: 20.0%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

667 words analyzed.

Speakers

3speakers26%attributed speech491writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 12 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 17 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 1 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 24 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 38 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 31 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 49 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 22 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 31 words • 0.0% coverageLai-Sheng Wang • 10 words • 100.0% coverageLai-Sheng Wang • 9 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 38 words • 0.0% coverageKirk Peterson • 11 words • 0.0% coverageKirk Peterson • 17 words • 0.0% coverageKirk Peterson • 21 words • 0.0% coverageLai-Sheng Wang • 26 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 14 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 13 words • 0.0% coveragePekka Pyykkö • 24 words • 100.0% coveragePekka Pyykkö • 21 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 34 words • 0.0% coverageLai-Sheng Wang • 37 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 3 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 9 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 9 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 5 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 7 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 11 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 11 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 6 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 7 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 11 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverage
Selected voice

Pekka Pyykkö

100%flagged-word coverage
45 attributed words26% of attributed speech76% writer coverage
0%27.5%55.0%Quote-first Misdirection+53.3 ptsWriter: 0.0%Pekka Pyykkö: 53.3%53.3%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.