I did my best to read through it, but I am not a chemistry buff, so this is my best attempt at explaining it. In molecules, the bonds between atoms can be single, double or triple, but it was a stated rule that double bonds only formed in 2D molecules. This discovery proves that is not the case and a double bonded atom can indeed take a 3D shape. With this limit removed in the shapes molecules can take. This is an opening for a huge jump in medicine and other chemistry related discoveries/creations as the set of tools chemists have to play with opened up just a little further.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 11 points 8 hours ago

In 2024, a research group led by UCLA chemist Neil Garg overturned Bredt's rule, a principle that had stood for more than a century. The rule states that molecules cannot form a carbon-carbon double bond at the "bridgehead" position (the ring junction of a bridged bicyclic molecule). Building on that breakthrough, Garg's team has now developed methods to create even stranger structures: cage-shaped molecules known as cubene and quadricyclene that contain highly unusual double bonds.