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Wow, someone pulled off that synthesis? I'm impressed! For those who are wondering if this has any practical applications, the answer is almost certainly no.
by gtmitchell 4y ago
Wow, someone pulled off that synthesis? I'm impressed!
For those who are wondering if this has any practical applications, the answer is almost certainly no. At best, someone might look at the synthetic pathways used to produce perfluorocubane to attempt to make something similar. It has really unusual spectroscopic and physical properties, which is pretty cool, but mostly in the sense of being a curiosity rather than being something you can do something with.
Imagine this as being the chemistry version of someone managing to get Doom to run on an electric toothbrush or something. It's interesting and amusing to know it's possible, but you're never actually going to start using your Sonicare for gaming.
- nextaccountic 4y agoCould this thing be attached to a solid substrate, perhaps a semiconductor, and remain in place? Like in a computer chip What about using that free electron in the middle to do computing? Perhaps a quantum computer or something I mean that's what reminded me: quantum computers often trap a charged particle, perhaps an ion or electrons, and use it to store qubits. This stuff here seems to be a perfect electron trap. Or isn't it? (note, I'm just throwing ideas in the air, I know almost nothing of chemistry, semiconductors or quantum computers)
- throwawaymaths 4y agoThat's actually not a terrible idea! But sadly the ion seems to be unstable, which means ithe electron is not 'trapped' and rather free to interact with it's cage.
- YakBizzarro 4y agoNot far from reality, indeed. Every time you have some molecule with a free electron, you can perform Electron Spin Resonance on it. You take a small amount of the molecule, put in a strong magnectic field, and with microwave you could drive the transition between the down and up state (parallel and antiparallel to the magnetic field). However, with a conventional spectrometer you can't control a single spin, because its signal would be tremendosly low, you would need at least ~10^13 molecules (maybe even less nowadays). If you want to use a single molecule, you need to connect to some kind of nanofabricated structure, in order to control and read it out. It's feasible, many works showed that, but very very difficult to engineer. You could spend most of your phd trying that (a pretty common tale in the field).
- mcguire 4y agoDang it! And I was just getting together venture capital for industrial scale production.
- atwood22 4y agoWouldn’t having an ion like this be useful? I’m not an expert in Chemistry, but most ions will either return or gain an electron at the first opportunity. This compound, on the other hand, likes having an extra electron.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoIt's a Time Cube. In a single rotation of the octafluorocubane, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24-hour Days within a single rotation.
- vitiral 4y agoSo it looks like a British phone booth and transports a Doctor around the Galaxy?
- jrumbut 4y agoI always get Time Lords and Time Cubes confused.
- zasdffaa 4y agoThey're both for squares.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoThere's no Doctor, only corner Cubics, rotating life's 4 corner stage metamorphosis. 4 corner head has 1 corner face, 4 face life. Educated fools can't comprehend Cubicism.
- yarg 4y agoOh no. https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9247913/time-cube-is-gone https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9247913/time-cube-is-gone
- daniel-cussen 4y agoYeah it opens up possibilities. Not worth patenting it or a near-neighbor. But this will lead places. In addition reduce search spaces. That's what it's all about with molecules these days. Search spaces.
- Pulcinella 4y agoRegular cubane and related compounds have been investigated as race fuels. The bond angles means that extra energy is stored (basically via tension in the bonds due to those extreme angles) compared to 4 ethane molecules (which add up to the same number of carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, and bonds as one cubane molecule). So your race car could weigh less while still having just as much fuel energy. I think most race series have standardized fuel across competitors now so it’s unlikely anyone will continue with the research.
- BizarroLand 4y agoWouldn't the exhaust gasses likely be highly fluorinated (and therefore dangerous to either man or the planet)?
- _carbyau_ 4y agoBoo. Every time a race series "standardises" something I see humanity losing a research angle. F1 is to cry for.
- deepsun 4y agoRocket fuels? Sounds similar to what race cars need.
- adrianN 4y agoJust making normal cubane is quite tricky as this (ongoing!) series shows: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnafk93vhO36cccP0p83hcop3xBTYkoTN https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnafk93vhO36cccP0p83h...