Pop quiz: what does a sheet of two-dimensional carbon have in common with the early state of the universe? If three Spanish physicists are correct, the way graphene buckles into ripples when compressed could provide some critical insights into the Higgs boson.
Graphene is the two-dimensional version of graphite, the stuff of pencil lead. There was some doubt as to whether this was even possible -- for it to be truly 2D it would have to be a mere atom thick, making it also highly unstable -- but Andre Geim and cohorts at the University of Manchester in the UK succeeded in creating sheets of graphene in 2004, in perhaps the most ingenious use of scotch tape yet devised.
Scads of physicists have been investigating this new substance further ever since. Geim and Konstantin Novoselov shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their graphene research.
Why are scientists so excited about a 2D sheet of carbon? Graphene has quantum superpowers! Much has been made of the material's potential for creating ultrafast molecular-scale transistors, especially the fact that the electrons in graphene zip along at the speed of light, as if they had no mass -- contrary to special relativity, which says no object with even the tiniest bit of mass can exactly reach the speed of light.
To read the rest of the article, click here.