A new form of carbon, schwartzites, has been created | Hacker News Reader

A new form of carbon, schwartzites, has been created

independent.co.uk

80 pointspmoriarty37 comments

Direct link to paper: http://sci-hub.tw/downloads/9ff7/10.1073@pnas.1805062115.pdf

I am allowed to read articles at work, it is tangentially part of my job, but independent.co.uk just put me in an awkward situation, and not for the first time.

My boss walked by and made a joke about what I was reading. The physics of carbon is a perfect valid thing for me to read, but what caught his eye was the plethora of sidebar/sponsored content on independent.co.uk. Does every add have to involve sexy models? I've got a blonde schoolgirl pushing something about investments, a redhead with something to tell me about kindles, and a athlete in bathing suit pushing some other clickbait. Sure, this is a work computer and I'm sure the advertising spies know I'm male, but I don't want this crap on my screen at home either.

My mistake: I just tried to highlight one of the sponsored content headlines ... which was actually part of the underlying pic. So I just 'clicked' the redhead with the kindle. My bad. I guess I'll need to cover my screen every time I want to read about graphite.

Why don't you use an ad-blocker?

"Secure" work computer. Security settings. Windows. We have a very short list of available software. I cannot even clear my browser history without first emailing IT.

can you edit your hosts file or get it changed by IT?

Latter may be possible but it is not specific to one instance, it is required to applied to all available instances.

Weird... using an adblocker would be the easiest and most efficient way to improve security.

I can understand the reluctance to install things that have the ability to read and modify all webpages read though.

In that case, a hosts file can go a long way.

That is indeed a big downside of adblocker plugins. You are giving a lot of permissions/trust to a third party. I assume uBlock Origin is safe, but in that I am trusting not only the author but also that the Firefox AddOns "store" is uncompromised. Those are things I probably could not verify on my own.

can't clear browser history - lol, what? plenty companies with sane work environments are hiring :)

Lol. I'm in the military. But our work environment is 1000% better than anything I ever saw in the civilian/tech world. Every assumption people have is wrong. We are more casual and friendly than any startup. Food is better too.

There's a reason why Gene Roddenberry based his version of utopia on the US Navy.

Well, I would say that 1950s/60s USN is a far cry from our culture. They didn't have casual fridays.

Last time I worked on base with a "secure" computer, every IT policy I read was silently appended with "...but your computer also has Visual Studio installed on it, and you have permission to run anything you can compile." But it was also airgapped from the other computer in my cube, that could reach the public internet, so not much point in writing my own ad-blocker. Mostly, it just made it a pain in the ass to use third-party GUI controls and data visualization libraries, and open-source was effectively banned.

There's also a pretty wide divide between the work environment of the genuine government employees and the contractors' employees. Anecdotally, there's still a bit of a good-ol'boy network pulling on the purse strings in the industry.

If you have the choice, and you work in tech, prefer to take contracted jobs from Navy and Coast Guard customers over other branches. I won't say why, but you'll probably be happier if you do.

Wouldn't disabling javascript, preferably selectively, be an /improvement/ to security?

Delete the entire sidebar in dev tools. I know it's not a fool-proof solution, but for the occasional article you want to spend more time reading it is a quick way to remove all those distractions. I do it on sites like that just for my own sanity, because they are constantly finding ways to get around my ad blocker.

I use a plugin that lets me selectively disable javascript on sites. I have most (all?) news sites with their JS disabled. Means I lose out on pictures.... but also all the annoying ads. Along with the rest of the ads.

Does Firefox reader view work on this site?

If it does try that.

How about using outline or similar to remove unwanted content? https://outline.com/nRwFNF

> Once inside, the carbon assembles into a graphene-like sheet that lines the walls of the zeolite pores. In doing so, the surface stretches and bends negatively.

I understand the negative curvature part, but the article fails to elaborate on why that’s an important or valuable property for a material to have. Can anyone explain a bit further?

This paper ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29141112 ) simulates schwartzite with a macroscopic 3d-printed model and finds that "these structures hold great promise as high load bearing and impact‐resistant materials due to a unique layered deformation mechanism that emerges in these architectures during loading.".

Earlier in the article there is discussion about how there are positive folding and flat forms of carbon, leading chemists to search for a negative folding form.

So I think it's not really implying anything more, just that they found one.

It seems the curvature is positive or negative in relation to the overall body of the material. With positive surface curvature we get bubble or shell shaped objects which in bulk amount to a very fine powder. If those shells/balls are fused with each other into a regular lattice - most of the structure can be identical (except the fused parts) but the balls become connected holes in a larger rigidly connected body, which is formed by their union.

Im guessing that in normal space negative curvature has to imply surfaces which do not bound a space, but which rather extend through a space - a kind of solid.

Negative curvature means a saddle, right?

I see - like around the inside of a torus.

Catalytic applications require finely tuned pore sizes and carbon may be more inert than the typical zeolite composition. Carbon is also probably electrically conductive, so it may be a basis for improved or different catalysts for fuel cells and battery electrodes.

Just a first guess, and catalysts/batteries are an expertise so that's just where my mind goes first. I'm sure there are others.

Am I correct that it looks like a 3D lattice made of units like this?

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bi...:

Basically, yes. There are some pictures in the original PNAS article.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08/13/1805062115

"schwarzites", not "schwartzites", which the article mistakenly prints 4 times, plus the HN submission

How do they know that the structure has only negative curvature and not regions with positive curvature? (like a bunch of soap bubbles that have coalesced)The structure in the paper labeled ztc-RWY certainly looks like it is ONLY positively curved.

Cue the "Spaceballs" references.

Due to its negative curvature, "Blazing Saddles" may be more appropriate.

These must be the midichlorians of the Spaceballs canon.

Just as with carbon nanotubes and graphene, researchers will compete on who can create the largest examples. "I see your schwartzite is as big as mine!"

Sounds like what Pizza the Hutt would freeze Lone Star in, for preservation

Named after the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger

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