Is there anything it can not do? Fertilize the plants of the world, provide an excellent source of heat, make diamonds and that is just scratching the surface. From the AAAS Science:
The next graphene? Shiny and magnetic, a new form of pure carbon dazzles with potential
A “happy accident” has yielded a new, stable form of pure carbon made from cheap feedstocks, researchers say. Like diamond and graphene, two other guises of carbon, the material seems to have extraordinary physical properties. It is harder than stainless steel, about as conductive, and as reflective as a polished aluminum mirror. Perhaps most surprising, the substance appears to be ferromagnetic, behaving like a permanent magnet at temperatures up to 125°C. The discovery, announced by physicist Joel Therrien of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell on 4 November here at the International Symposium on Clusters and Nanomaterials, could lead to lightweight coatings, medical products, and novel electronic devices.
Therrien’s talk elicited both excitement and caution among the dozens of researchers attending the meeting. “Once it is published and the work has been replicated by others, it will generate a lot of interest for sure,” says Qian Wang, an applied physicist at Peking University in Beijing. She notes that carbon is much lighter than other ferromagnetic elements such as manganese, nickel, and iron. Moreover, carbon is nontoxic in the body, she says. “If it can be magnetic, it could be very useful for making biosensors or drug-delivery carriers” that could be magnetically interrogated or directed to diseased tissues.
This has not been reproduced by another labrotory so the jury is still out but wow - if this pans out, it could be interesting. New technologies. AAAS is the American Association for the Advancement of Science - good people.
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