These days, we would call them proprietary blends. But in the late 1500s and early 1600s, individual alchemists called the medicines they cooked up in their labs ‘secrets’. And thanks to a study ...

Tungsten, or wolfram, is not an easy element to extract. Its ores require extremely high temperatures to reduce, making its early presence in a 16th-century setting remarkable. The element is ...

Tungsten minerals include wolframite, scheelite, powellite, cuprotungstite and tungstite. Wolframite and scheelite — the two main commercial ores — are often found in quartz veins and contact ...

The chemical element, also known as wolfram, occurs naturally in certain minerals. It’s possible that tungsten appeared in Brahe’s lab through a mineral, or perhaps he processed one in a way ...

The sun-mimicking technology known as nuclear fusion hopes to create “limitless” energy by smashing light nuclei together using immense heat, but containing such hot plasma is proving tricky.