Category: The ant playground
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The puzzling wrinkles in graphene
Last year, Jannick Meyer at the Max Plank Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and pals discovered that single sheets of graphene are gently rippled, like the rolling hills of New England. That’s a puzzle because graphene behaves like a perfect 2D crystal. So how do these ripples form and what role do they…
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First X-ray diffraction image of a single virus
X-ray crystallography has been a workhorse technique for chemists since the 1940s and 50s. For many years, it was the only way to determine the 3D structure of complex biological molecules such haemoglobin, DNA and insulin. Many a Nobel prize has been won poring over diffraction images with a magnifying glass. But x-ray crystallography has…
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The trouble with optical invisibility cloaks
You could be forgiven for thinking that invisibility cloaks are a few R&D dollars away from hitting the high streets. Not so. While it’s true that a number of high profile cloaks have been built, the best of these work only in the radio and microwave regions of the spectrum and then only in at…
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The vibration harvest
All them turbines, drills and shakers in our modern factories make one almighty din. We’re talking about a substantial amount of a-jumpin and a-jiggling which generally goes to waste. Couldn’t there be a way of harvesting this energy so that it can be re-used? Turns out Tom Sterken and pals at IMEC, an independent nanostuff…
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Quantum computers and the death of chemistry
When it comes to chemistry, computer simulations suck. The best they can do is simulate the electron dynamics of a helium atom, which is almost as simple as it gets. Never mind the rest of the periodic table and how the elements interact with each other. But that’s gonna change when we get quantum computers,…
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Graphite valley
Them chemists have been bewitched by carbon in recent years. Ya can’t move in chemistry departments without being abused ‘n’ bombarded with nanotubes, buckyballs and all mannner of carbononsense. But in all their hurry to blow their own carbon nanotrumpets, it loooks as if they missed a wonder material staring them in the face. Now…
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How atom lasers are coming of age
Atom lasers are gonna be mighty useful for testing quantum mechanics to its limits. But ain’t nobody built one that can operate continuously, which is what yerl need for these kindsa experiments. We’ve had pulsed atom lasers for about a decade and it looks as if a continuous version may be close. Atom lasers work…
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Nanowire magnets
Take a handful of Cobalt-Nickel (Co80-Ni20) alloy nanowires and drop them into a mixture of toluene and the synthetic polymer PMMA. Zap the mixture with a decent magnetic field, sit back and wait. The field causes the nanowires to align and as the toluene evaporates, the PMMA traps them in place as it solidifies. The…
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The heterohydrogen question
Can hydrogen and and antihydrogen bind to form a stable molecule? That’s the question that a growing number of particlebods have been scratchin’ their eggs over. And it ain’t merely hypothetical, neither. In the last few years, engineers at CERN in Switzerland and Fermilab near Chicago have been a-tinkerin’ and a-toyin’ with their particle traps…