The nature of mass is one of the great enduring puzzles of science. What is mass and where does it come from are questions that have puzzled scientists and philosophers for centuries.
So the suggestion that mass can be created inside carbon nanotubes will produce some significant head scratching.
The idea comes from Abdulaziz Alhaidari at the Saudi Center for Theoretical Physics in Saudi Arabia and a few pals who begin with a review of the exotic properties of graphene, a 2-dimensional sheet of carbon "chickenwire".
One of the most exciting new ideas in solid state physics is that graphene can act as a laboratory for studying exotic relativistic physics. It turns out that the electronic properties of graphene can be tuned so that the movement of electrons and holes through the structure at speeds of 10^6 m/s is mathematically equivalent to the behaviour of electrons travelling in a vacuum close to the speed of light.
This is a potentially huge development. To read the rest of the article, click here.