{"id":688,"date":"2007-07-28T15:08:17","date_gmt":"2007-07-28T20:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=688"},"modified":"2007-07-29T11:38:35","modified_gmt":"2007-07-29T16:38:35","slug":"closer-but-no-cigar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=688","title":{"rendered":"Close(r), but no cigar…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>When I first read this article<\/a>, my thoughts were “Wow!\u00a0 Has the ribbon problem finally been solved?”\u00a0 The specific line that made me think this was;<\/p>\n

“Now, a research team from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has assembled particles of graphene oxide, a form of graphite and a cousin of diamonds, into very thin sheets that ARE EVEN STRONGER THAN THOSE OF THE [CARBON] NANOTUBES.”\u00a0 (emphasis mine)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But wait, how can this be?\u00a0 I thought\u00a0carbon nanotubes were theoretically the strongest material possible.<\/p>\n

Then the article said;<\/p>\n

“Laboratory tests showed that the grapheme paper was as strong as that made from carbon nanotubes…”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait.\u00a0 First\u00a0its “even stronger”, then its “as strong as”.\u00a0 ???\u00a0 I guess they’re picking and choosing what kind of carbon nanotubes to compare it with (and then changing that on the fly).<\/p>\n

The accompanying abstract<\/a>\u00a0gave some real numbers to look at; the strength of this new graphene oxide\u00a0paper is given as 32 GPa.\u00a0 Very strong indeed,\u00a0nearly 8 times as strong as steel, but, alas,\u00a0not strong enough for an earth-based Space Elevator (130 GPa needed for a factor of two safety margin – Edwards).<\/p>\n

Still, a very impressive accomplishment indeed.\u00a0 If\/once the water solubility issue is solved, this\u00a0stuff will be used in all sorts of applications.\u00a0 They could even\u00a0make mail\u00a0envelopes out of it; lets see\u00a0the post office\u00a0try and mangle those…<\/p>\n

(Photo credit: Northwestern University.\u00a0 Click on it or visit the articles to view a larger version)<\/em><\/p>\n

Update July 29th – I’ve heard from a couple of people that not all GPa’s are the same, and that this stuff isn’t that strong at all.\u00a0 Please note Tom Nugent’s comment on this post…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first read this article, my thoughts were “Wow!\u00a0 Has the ribbon problem finally been solved?”\u00a0 The specific line that made me think this was; “Now, a research team from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has assembled particles of graphene oxide, a form of graphite and a cousin of diamonds, into very thin sheets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}