Oct 21, 2010 15:01 GMT  ·  By
Rendition of a 2D sheet of graphene, showing its hexagonal, honeycomb-like structure
   Rendition of a 2D sheet of graphene, showing its hexagonal, honeycomb-like structure

In a research paper appearing in the journal arXiv, a team of physicists details how mass can be created inside the two-dimensional carbon compound known as graphene.

This material has a peculiar range of chemical and physical properties, which make it the next big thing in the electronics industry. The range of potential applications for the carbon compound is endless.

It was precisely this potential that was recognized this year with the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, which went to the University of Manchester team that first obtained the material less than 6 years ago.

Now, scientists say that the ability to create mass should be listed in the impressive roaster of capabilities graphene already boasts, Technology Review reports.

The new announcement is bound to create some controversies in the international scientific community, given that the nature and origin of mass have yet to be determined and widely accepted.

The new idea comes from experts at the Saudi Center for Theoretical Physics in Saudi Arabia, who were led by physicist Abdulaziz Alhaidari. The group was studying the properties of graphene when it made the findings.

One interesting thing about the material's properties is that they can be tuned to such an extent that the movements of electrons and holes through its hexagonal structure at speeds of 10^6 m/s becomes the mathematical equivalent of the behavior of electrons traveling in a vacuum close to the speed of light.

Studying the relativistic behavior of electrons is an area of research that was until recently reserved only to those research groups that had access to particle accelerators.

In the new investigation, the researchers focused on an idea that quantum physicists have in mind when thinking about mass, and namely that it is the product of extra, space-like dimensions in the Universe.

Experts refer to these dimensions as being compactified, in the sense that they only make their presence and effects felt at the tiniest of scales. Alhaidari says that these dimensions may be at work in graphene as well.

All that is needed for that to happen is for the space-like dimensions in the material to be compactified, and the way the team proposes this can be done is by simply rolling the material into a carbon nanotube.

The new structure is 1-dimensional, as far as electrons and holes within go, even if it has three dimensions when we observe it through a microscope.

The group plans to conduct additional investigations into this issue, in a bid to make more sense of this idea, and to determine any practical applications that producing mass on a lab bench might have.