Physicists Say Graphene Could Create Mass 184
eldavojohn writes "Graphene has gotten a lot of press lately. The Nobel prize-winning, fastest-spinning, nanobubble-enhanced silicon replacement is theorized to have a new, more outlandish property. As reported by Technology Review's Physics Blog, graphene should be able to create mass inside properly formed nanotubes. According to Abdulaziz Alhaidari's calculations, if one were to roll up graphene into a nanotube, this could compactifiy dimensions (from the sheet's two down to the tube's one), and thus 'the massless equations that describe the behavior of electrons and holes will change to include a term for mass. In effect, compactifying dimensions creates mass.' What once would require a massive high-energy particle accelerator can now be tested with carbon, electricity, and wires, according to the recent paper."
Goodbye old and apparently wrong laws of physics. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well now... That changes everyhing! (if true).
Re:Not 1-dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just a few short years away from... (Score:3, Insightful)
We have that already. They're called baristas.
This phenomenon closely related to: (Score:4, Insightful)
The bogon [hacker-dictionary.com].
Seriously, can't anyone at Tech Review spot the flaw here? A tube still has more than one dimension. Even if you managed to create a chain of single carbon atoms, you'd still have multiple dimensions, in that the atoms comprising the chain are not infinitely short and infinitely flat.
Bah. Sensationalist nonsense non-news.
Yes, but tech blog made a hash of it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheers, thanks. The main issue is that the blog really made a hash of the explanation with sensationalist claptrap:
... which is utter hokum. Further down the page, there are a couple breakdowns of the paper itself, which make it clear that what they're doing is what you say -- constraining the physics of a potential experiment to simplify the mathematics involved.
Cheers,
Re:Can anybody summarize TFA? (Score:3, Insightful)
People (i.e., mostly you) seem to blame kdawson, but really, he's just clicking the button when the post bubbles to the top of the Firehose, which happens because the Firehose is an idiocracy. People voting there are mostly ignorant, so anything that is above their understanding gets a positive nod, because most things that reach the front page are above their understanding, so they think that's the criterion.
Sometimes, not voting is better for you than voting is. Like, when you're too uninformed or misinformed to make a correct decision.
Re:Can anybody summarize TFA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Normally the equations governing movement of electrons are independent of mass.
That's only because the mass of the electron (1/1900th the mass of a neutron or proton) is usually negligible in the dynamics you're calculating.
In superconductors, the equations really do eliminate the force of mass*acceleration from consideration, along with any other forces the electrons would normally be expected to react to (that would contribute to transfer of energy that would make the nuclei vibrate randomly in place; i.e., resistance heating).
Apparently all that's happening here is that he's predicting nanotubes not to have all of the properties that flat graphene sheets have. And he's saying it in a way that confuses most people, including many of those who could probably have derived it and described it in a much less confusing way.