© Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
University Distinguished Professor of physics Arun Bansil (left) and associate professor of physics Swastik Kar accidentally discovered a new way to manipulate electronic charge.
University Distinguished Professor of physics Arun Bansil (left) and associate professor of physics Swastik Kar accidentally discovered a new way to manipulate electronic charge.
Famously, many of the greatest scientific discoveries have been accidental. Alexander Fleming let bread go moldy and discovered penicillin. Archimedes splashing about in the bath stumbled upon how to measure the volume of a solid.
It's perhaps an indictment of the modern world's overly-regimented and bureaucratic scientific community that such unintentional breakthroughs never seem to happen anymore. Western university-industrial complexes are burdened with never-ending paperwork, and huge resources devoted to ethical and health and safety requirements. These modern innovations have their benefits, of course, but they do have a major downside, in that they completely smother the more spontaneous side of the scientific method.
But now, a team of scientists at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, have made an exciting and accidental discovery in the often-overlooked field of materials science. This team has previously made several leaps forward in the world of materials science by stacking ultra-thin 2D layers on top of each other to form new structures. These sheets are only a couple of atoms thick - so thin, in fact, that the electrons within them are restricted to movement in just two dimensions (hence their name '2D materials').
Comment: "Yay, let's PLAY with it!"
Er, how about we wake up and smell the pooh hitting the fan?
We've long suspected that some (or most) of the 'slow-moving meteors' burning up in the atmosphere of late are in fact asteroids that had been previously captured by Earth's gravity.
The same phenomenon is apparently occurring with respect to other planets in our solar system, whose numbers of 'moons' grow by the year. Those new 'moons' are typically accounted for by 'better observation technology', but clearly the actual numbers of 'moons' are growing...
UPDATE February 28: RT reports that astronomers at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii have released pictures of 2020 CD3. The image is actually a combination of three separate images using three different filters to capture the new moon. Lead astronomer Grigori Fedorets says he expects to find 'a population of these objects once the Rubin Observatory is operational'..and they may indeed!