The impossible is happening in chemistry as well as metallurgy. The discovery was a complete surprise and came following the first successful isolation of a long-elusive molecule called methylhydroxycarbene by the research team. While the team was pleased that it had "trapped" the prized compound in solid argon through an extremely low-temperature experiment, they were surprised when it vanished within a few hours. That prompted UGA theoretical chemistry professor Wesley Allen to conduct large scale, state-of-the-art computations to solve the mystery. "What we found was that the change was being controlled by a process called quantum mechanical tunneling," said Allen, "and we found that tunneling can supersede the traditional chemical reactivity processes of kinetic and thermodynamic control. We weren't expecting this at all." What had happened? Clearly, a chemical reaction had taken place, but only inert argon atoms surrounded the compound, and essentially no thermal energy was available to create new molecular arrangements. Moreover, said Allen, "the observed product...

The condescension of scholars and "experts" toward amateurs, autodidacts, and kids who think divergent things because they have not been so thoroughly indoctrinated with the canon is in one sense unremarkable social behavior, status seeking and maintenance by dominant dogs. Everybody does it. But it is a particularly destructive behavior in education and other discovery systems since it quells divergent thinking, the very thing needed in the search for knowledge and wisdom. It shouldn't have worked. The basic process of heat-treating steel has changed little in the modern age, and engineer Suresh Babu is one of few researchers worldwide who still study how to tune the properties of steel in detail. He's an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, and Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Integrative Materials Joining for Energy Applications, headquartered at the university. "Steel is what we would call a 'mature technology.' We'd like to think we know most...

An earlier post cited research that found improved catalysts for hydrolysis - splitting water to yield hydrogen and oxygen - that were based on amorphous molybdenum sulphides that are abundant and cheap, and mimic the nitrogenase and hydrogenase enzymes – both of which evolve H2 in nature - and are similar hacks on nanoparticulate molybdenum sulphides. New research finds that manganese is even better. Like other elements in the middle of the Periodic Table, manganese can exist in a number of what chemists call oxidation states. These correspond to the number of oxygen atoms with which a metal atom could be combined," Professor Spiccia said. "When an electrical voltage is applied to the cell, it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and when the researchers carefully examined the catalyst as it was working, using advanced spectroscopic methods they found that it had decomposed into a much simpler material called birnessite, well-known to geologists as a black stain on many...

If this comes to pass solar would be a strong contender. Efficiency is a problem with today's solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years. ... energy generated using traditional photovoltaic (PV) methods of solar collection is inefficient and neglects much of the available solar electromagnetic (sunlight) spectrum. The device his team has developed – essentially a thin, moldable sheet of small antennas called nantenna – can harvest the heat from industrial processes and convert it into usable electricity. Their ambition is to extend this concept to a direct solar facing nantenna device capable of collecting solar irradiation in the near infrared and optical regions of the solar spectrum. ... "Our overall goal is to collect and utilize as much solar...

They are made of silicon - chemically identical to glass - but are 3,000 times less dense due to air pockets that can take up to 600 pounds per square inch of pressure before collapsing and losing insulation capability. They are about three times as effective as present insulation materials of equivalent thickness, or, said another way, three times thinner for the same insulation ability. Their use in clothing, especially for extreme conditions, is obvious but when used for building insulation they have mad R factors and significantly reduce energy consumption. But there is a considerable amount of whingeing about their cost. It is claimed that a combination of savings in construction costs and subsequent energy use makes them cost effective. I want aerogel insoles for my winter boots....

An interesting nanotech application. The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily. The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase...

When faced with necessity the impossible happens. electrons . . . seem to have no size or shape and are impossible to break apart. However, what is true about the properties of a single electron does not seem to be the case when electrons are brought together. Instead the like-charged electrons repel each other and need to modify the way they move to avoid getting too close to each other. In ordinary metals this does not usually make much difference to their behaviour. However, if the electrons are put in a very narrow wire the effects are exacerbated as they find it much harder to move past each other. In 1981, physicist Duncan Haldane conjectured theoretically that under these circumstances and at the lowest temperatures the electrons would always modify the way they behaved so that their magnetism and their charge would separate into two new types of particle called spinons and holons. The challenge was to confine electrons...

I suspect that advances in materials science will drive much of our near-future progress. Graphane has the same honeycomb structure as graphene, except that it is "spray-painted" with hydrogen atoms that attach themselves to the carbon. The resulting bonds between the hydrogen and carbon atoms effectively tie down the electrons that make graphene so conducting. Yet graphane retains the thinness, super-strength, flexibility and density of its older chemical cousin. . . . . . the discovery of graphane opens the flood gates to further chemical modifications of graphene. With metallic graphene at one end and insulating graphane at the other, can we fill in the divide between them with, say, graphene-based semiconductors or by, say, substituting hydrogen for fluorine? As Professor Novoselov writes, "Being able to control the resistivity, optical transmittance and a material's work function would all be important for photonic devices like solar cells and liquid-crystal displays, for example, and altering mechanical properties and surface potential is...