Carbon Magnets At Room Temperature

Bolie writes: "Trying to make high temperature super conductors yielded an unexpected result. The pure carbon bucky ball material was put under pressure to make sheets. That worked. Picture microscopic bubble pack. But the result was a sheet that was magnetic at room temperature. It has not escaped the attention of the discoverer, Tatiana Makarova, that this might be useful for a non-metallic computer memory. The material is also lighter than metals, flexible and transparent. Lasers anyone?"

minus signs

[bowb]

But to her surprise, she found instead that the new material was magnetic even above 200 C. Until now, the highest temperature at which a non-metallic material was magnetic was 255 C. This record was held by a different form of buckyballs.

I can't make sense of that. 255C is higher than 200C. Did they mean -255C and -200C ?

250 degrees ? 200 ?

[gibodean]

Is it just me, or do the following quotes from the article not make sense ?

The new magnetic sheet "...is the first non-metallic magnet to work at room temperature."

"...she found instead that the new material was magnetic even above 200 C. Until now, the highest temperature at which a non-metallic material was magnetic was 255 C."

Which is it ?

Re:minus signs

[nealbutler]

Yes, but -255C is lower than 200C! Besides, I hardly think -200C would count as room temperature.....

Storage?

[Dr_Cheeks]

"....record data at unprecedented densities."

Right, so yet another possible way to store lots of data. We hear about these all the time (holographic memory, molecular storage etc.), but when are we actually going to get some of this - at the moment everyone still seems to be working on Winchester drives and semiconductor memory.

Is all this just pie in the sky, or are people actually producing devices that use these exotic storage methods? I figure this is about the best place to ask.

Re:Why the exotic ideas?

[megaduck]

We see the world through the filter of our own experience. When something like this is posted on Slashdot, where a lot of people eat/sleep/breathe computers, the first idea is naturally going to be, "How can this make my computer better?".

By your super-motor idea, I imagine that you deal with motors quite a bit (perhaps as an engineer?). It's just a matter of perspective.

Re:Good news for NanoTech.

[Muad'Dave]

You forgot the biggie - Carbon is good for life!

wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolute zero is not -253.15 deg C, it is -273.16 deg C.

Re:Yay Buckyball Experiments

[schtum]

But without science we'd never have figured this, or anything else, out. Pity those who make religion their science.