The colloquium speaker yesterday mentioned a theoretical prediction of the existence of a stable 'buckyball' made from Boron atoms. It's like the structure of the famous Buckminsterfullerene C60 except that an additional atom is placed at the centre of every hexagon. It was publicised last year, and the paper with ab initio calculation was published in Phys Rev Lett. Is the symmetry really icosahedral? There's a question mark since some other scientists have released a preprint on ArXiv that suggests a structure with tetrahedral symmetry might be more stable (some of the atoms at the centre of the hexagons are pushed in, others are pushed out). We'll know for sure if this paper passes the peer review process.
2 comments:
Hey Tim,
Well, I'm reading your blog now and then, and so despite the lack of comments (up until now), I can say with confidence that you have a visitor rate of at least 0.3 day^{-1}.
Hmmm, boron Buckyballs... what will those idiots with their unrealistic ab-initio "fantasy-world" computer programs come up with next?! Those programs really just generate papers, don'tcha know?
I would make some more insightful comments, but I've left that part of my life behind me now (i.e., I've forgotten most of it). Now, ask me something about high-voltage LDMOS transistors, and I'm your man! (you wish)
Hope all is well. :-)
Steve (S.)
Peer review? No, that won't tell us much. What we need is some experimental confirmation.
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