back to article Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's... er, Graphene bubbles – 200 times stronger than Superman

Tiny graphene bubbles can withstand enormous pressures and are 200 times stronger than steel, according to scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK. Results published today in Nature Communications reveal yet another superior property in graphene, also known as the "miracle material." Stacking graphene on top of …

  1. bob, mon!

    Underrr.... PRESSURE!

    Great. Now I have Bowie and Queen stuck in my head.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: Underrr.... PRESSURE!

      Lucky, I also got Vanilla Ice when Queen popped in there...

      1. asdf

        Re: Underrr.... PRESSURE!

        Just old enough to not have had that POS hack ruin the original in my head. Unlike Marky Mark and the Fresh Prince though he mercifully did disappear.

        1. asdf

          Re: Underrr.... PRESSURE!

          Badly off topic but the only other version of that song I could ever stand was when Bowie did it with Annie Lennox at Freddie's Tribute concert. That was the highlight of show along with Plant doing Crazy Little Thing and also for the record fsck Axl on this homophobe apology tour for ruining the night.

    2. Jeffrey Nonken

      Re: Underrr.... PRESSURE!

      Not Billy Joel?

  2. Clive Galway
    Stop

    Ekaterina Khestanova, a PhD student who performed the experiments, believes the pressurised bubbles could be used to prevent liquids from freezing.

    "Such pressures are enough to modify the properties of a material trapped inside the bubbles and, for example, can force crystallization of a liquid well above its normal freezing temperature," she said

    Eh? Isn't she saying the exact opposite? Sounds to me like she is saying you can get it to freeze at a higher temperature.

  3. adnim
    Joke

    Gigapascals?

    How many elephants is that on the head of a pin?

    1. Elmer Phud

      Re: Gigapascals?

      Depends how many Nuns you take off first

    2. Wilco

      Re: Gigapascals?

      Since you asked

      area of pin head = 2mm^2 = 2 * 10^-6 m^2

      mass of an african bush elephant = 6000 kg

      force exerted by elephant on earth = 6000 * 9.8 = 58,800 N

      1 pascal = 1 N / m^2

      Pressure of 1 elephant standing on tippy toe on a pin head

      58,800 / 2 * 10^-6 = 58,800 * 10^6 / 2 = 29.4 gigapascals

      Therefore 29 and a bit elephants

      1. jzl

        Re: Gigapascals?

        You mean therefore 1/29 elephants.

        I'd also done the calculation (with an Indian elephant at 2,600 kg) but you got there first!

        1. Wilco

          Re: Gigapascals?

          Quite right, I GP = 1/29 of an elephant pin standing. A new reg unit dawns.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Gigapascals?

          But Indian elephants are non-migratory aren't they?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Gigapascals?

            The distances don't look big as the crow flies :D

          2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Black Helicopters

            Re: Gigapascals?

            "But Indian elephants are non-migratory aren't they?"

            That's what they want you to think!

      2. macjules
        Coat

        Re: Gigapascals?

        What if it's an Indian elephant? As in swallows .. African ... European etc.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tensile strength ?

    Everyone was raving a few years back that we had the materials that we could build a space elevator from, except their tensile strength hadn't been properly tested so we didn't know their breaking length, and whether they would work.

    Since then I haven't seen any new mention of measuring the tensile strength of these materials.

    Why would that be ?

    1. Aqua Marina

      Re: Tensile strength ?

      From memory, 2 of the competing companies in the field that were doing all the research had quite literally bet their owners assets on the technology, and when the economy crashed a few years ago they lost the roofs over their heads. Not due to a failure of the technology or the research. but more to the fact that over the course of days any money and assets they had simply vapourised.

      I saw a documentary about these guys recently, one of them still can't afford a car, and the other one quit the field, and went and got another job in marine engineering, ironically where a lot of the research he did on the elevator, could be put into practice.

      There was a third guy who at one point had worked for both of the guys above. He was essentially the brains, and he decided to quit completely because he had worked out that the breakthroughs were predictable, and were about a hundred years away, and he would never get to see them in his lifetime, so he would rather work on something he knew he would be able to complete.

    2. Scroticus Canis
      Boffin

      Re: Tensile strength ?

      Saw an article in one of the pop science mags recently about the fact that one carbon atom out of place in a graphene ribbon/cord and its tensile strength drops dramatically thus knackering any hope of using this for an orbital tether. Just can't make it flawless for usable lengths.

      From the article it sounds like these bubbles are not graphene but contaminants between a graphene layer and substrate layer. How do they get the contaminants out to leave a half bubble or are they pressue testing the "bubbles" contents? Aren't buckyballs graphene bubbles?

  5. Doctor_Wibble
    Trollface

    Just some guy in tights and a cape

    Sorry, that was right there, and shame on anyone who doesn't remember that one!

    Though back to relevance, it's always the mistakes and imperfect stuff that's the most interesting, so well done to them for turning 'interesting' into 'quite possibly really useful'.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Just some guy in tights and a cape

      Though back to relevance, it's always the mistakes and imperfect stuff that's the most interesting, so well done to them for turning 'interesting' into 'quite possibly really useful'.

      "The most exciting phrase to hear in science,

      the one that heralds new discoveries,

      is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

      Isaac Asimov

  6. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Fullerenes

    Aren't graphene balls technically fullerenes?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fullerenes

      Hang on while I check :D

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. graphene nanoribbon

    Oh the irony, if ol' Clarke was right.

    "Zero gee manufacturing, its the only way to guarantee a perfect atomic structure with sufficient long range organization".

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