Superhard materials can slice, drill and polish other objects. Now, science is opening the door to the development of new materials with these seductive qualities. Researchers have used computational techniques to identify 43 previously unknown forms of carbon that are thought to be stable and superhard — including several predicted to be slightly harder than…
With apologies to “Spinal Tap,” it appears that black can, indeed, get more black. MIT engineers report today that they have cooked up a material that is 10 times blacker than anything that has previously been reported. The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — microscopic filaments of carbon, like a…
In 2011 Peter Kalmus calculated the carbon emissions associated with his personal and professional activities for his previous year as a postdoc at Caltech. The climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that his air travel to two international and half a dozen domestic conferences accounted for more than two-thirds of his annual emissions.…