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Engineers have long dreamed of creating a wonderful material that can revolutionize construction. In 2004, their dream came true. British scientists first created Graphene—one of the forms of nanocarbon that is only 0.3 nanometers thick—a million times thinner than a human hair, but it can withstand colossal loads! Many immediately predicted a great future for it, and a little later, scientists were given the Nobel Prize. However, mass adoption did not happen. And only now, after 15 years, the first real opportunities have appeared to use the material of the future in commercial projects. Super-substance is made from ordinary graphite,...

In his book "2061 - Odyssey Three" (the third of his Space Odyssey series), Arthur C. Clarke put forward the intriguing proposal that the core of the planet Jupiter was, in fact, a diamond the size of Earth. Now Clarke, even though a science fiction author of some repute, had a science background and always tried to bring rigorous scientific accuracy to his stories. So, could his proposition be possible? The somewhat predictable answer is - we don't know. But we can analyse the possibility within known scientific parametres, to see if it is, at least, possible. For diamond to...

UCLA scientists inject silicon carbide nanoparticles into a magnesium zinc alloy. The result is a metal with 'record breaking' strength and stiffness-to-weight.Scientists at UCLA have found a new way to inject silicon carbide nanoparticles into a molten alloy of magnesium and zinc, resulting a metal nanocomposite that demonstrates "record levels" of stiffness-to-weight and specific strength, and "superior stability" at high temperatures. Magnesium is already the lightest structural metal, this lab creation maintains its light weight but makes it much stronger. The researchers said they also developed a scalable manufacturing process, opening up a door to lighter and stronger cars, planes,...

Scientists have uncovered a class of gold atom clusters that are the first known metallic hollow equivalents of the famous hollow carbon fullerenes known as buckyballs. The evidence for what their discoverers call “hollow golden cages” appeared today in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The fullerene is made up of a sphere of 60 carbon (C) atoms; gold (Au) requires many fewer—16, 17 and 18 atoms, in triangular configurations more gem-like than soccer ball. At more than 6 angstroms across, or roughly a ten-millionth the size of a comma, they are...

Nobel winner who discovered 'buckyballs' dead at 62 Fri Oct 28, 8:17 PM ET HOUSTON (Reuters) - Rice University professor Richard Smalley, who shared a 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of "buckyballs," has died of cancer at the age of 62, the university said on Friday. Buckyballs, short for buckminsterfullerenes, were a form of carbon that had 60 atoms arranged in a hollow sphere and whose discovery in 1985 opened the way for the development of the field of nanotechnology. Smalley, fellow Rice chemist Robert Curl and British chemist Harold Kroto shared the prize for their work...

Buckyballs, a spherical form of carbon discovered in 1985 and an important material in the new field of nanotechnology, can cause extensive brain damage in fish, according to research presented yesterday at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif. Eva Oberdörster, an environmental toxicologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said the buckyballs also altered the behavior of genes in liver cells of the juvenile largemouth bass she studied. Buckyballs are part of a group of materials called fullerenes for their structural resemblance to the geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller. Synthetically produced buckyballs, along with...