Scientists create thinnest pane of glass ever, and it looks familiar

ScienceShot: Two-Dimensional Glass - ScienceNOW

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/sn-glass.jpg

Researchers have created the world's thinnest pane of glass—and it looks oddly familiar.

The glass, made of silicon and oxygen, formed accidentally when the scientists were making graphene,
an atom-thick sheet of carbon, on copper-covered quartz.
They believe an air leak caused the copper to react with the quartz, which is also made of silicon and oxygen,
producing a glass layer with the graphene.

The glass is a mere three atoms thick—the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional.

Although this is the first time such a thin sheet of freestanding glass has been produced, the image above,
taken with an electron microscope, isn't entirely new.
Reporting in an upcoming issue of Nano Letters, the team notes that it "strikingly resembles"
a diagram drawn by a glass theorist attempting to unravel its structure back in 1932 (inset).
In the ghostly microscope image, two silicon atoms bound together with an oxygen atom appear as white dots,
with oxygen atoms forming gray connecting lines. This network of random-sized rings is mirrored in the old black and white sketch.
In addition to demonstrating how graphene makes it possible to produce previously unfeasible 2D-materials,
ultra-thin glass could be used in semiconductor or graphene transistors.

1) no it's not "two dimensional". It's three atoms thick so it would have to have no width or no length to be considered 2-d.
2) "glass theorist"? That's a funny phrase.

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Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

1) no it's not "two dimensional". It's three atoms thick so it would have to have no width or no length to be considered 2-d.

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Yeah, I don't like that term either. But it's being used a lot in science journalism now. Not sure if the actual scientists use it, though. Coz they should know that even 1 atom has form.

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Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

2) "glass theorist"? That's a funny phrase.

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I lol'd at that too :lol: Some of the strangest niches in science.

I wish we could tell that glass theorist that his theory was pretty darn accurate.

Some of the coolest discoveries are never seen by their theorists, which makes me sad.

IKR....
It's like I was reading a couple of months ago about how they have now shown how quantum fluids behave, turbulence in the fluids etc.
Feynman predicted this 50 years ago using just Mathematics lol
It's absolutely incredibly that anyone could do that and get it exactly right. But very sad that he could never see the proof of how correct he was.

Well, quantum mechanics has essentially been finished for approaching a century. Once you know the equations governing something it's unsurprising that you can use them to correctly predict novel phenomena. Indeed the fact that you can do this is one of the main reasons that science is extremely important on a practical level.

What freaks me out is how physicists predict new particles using only very basic axioms about symmetry. I was talking to some tutor a couple of nights ago, he basically said that they have no idea why it works, it just does and they go with it.

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Originally Posted by ThePreserver

I wish we could tell that glass theorist that his theory was pretty darn accurate.

Some of the coolest discoveries are never seen by their theorists, which makes me sad.

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Progress depends upon those minds.

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Originally Posted by Xei

Well, quantum mechanics has essentially been finished for approaching a century. Once you know the equations governing something it's unsurprising that you can use them to correctly predict novel phenomena. Indeed the fact that you can do this is one of the main reasons that science is extremely important on a practical level.

What freaks me out is how physicists predict new particles using only very basic axioms about symmetry. I was talking to some tutor a couple of nights ago, he basically said that they have no idea why it works, it just does and they go with it.

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How did I know that was going to happen :roll:
It's still incredible that it can be done. Predicting something like that exactly.

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Originally Posted by Xei

Well, quantum mechanics has essentially been finished for approaching a century. Once you know the equations governing something it's unsurprising that you can use them to correctly predict novel phenomena. Indeed the fact that you can do this is one of the main reasons that science is extremely important on a practical level.

What freaks me out is how physicists predict new particles using only very basic axioms about symmetry. I was talking to some tutor a couple of nights ago, he basically said that they have no idea why it works, it just does and they go with it.

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Is it really true that quantum mechanics is complete? I suppose reconciling QM and GR is the only thing left to do. Also are you talking about the E8 model? As far as I knew supersymmetry has not been verified yet, I would be surprised if nature was really as symmetrical as the standard model predicts.

E8 is absolutely wrong. Look it up. It predicts particles that don't exist and doesn't predict particles that do.

Quantum mechanics is a complete theory with all of its postulates worked out. It simply remains to derive all of the consequences of said postulates. The same is not true for quantum field theories. We can't even prove that those models actually exist as consistant mathematical objects.

And of course QM is ultimately wrong. It just happens to be a very useful model.

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Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

E8 is absolutely wrong. Look it up. It predicts particles that don't exist and doesn't predict particles that do.

Quantum mechanics is a complete theory with all of its postulates worked out. It simply remains to derive all of the consequences of said postulates. The same is not true for quantum field theories. We can't even prove that those models actually exist as consistant mathematical objects.

And of course QM is ultimately wrong. It just happens to be a very useful model.

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I don't know enough math to understand the E8 model. Likewise the standard model predicts the existence of anti-particles, gravitons and the infamous higgs; all of which have not yet been verified. Also I thought Bell's theorem still presented unsolved problems in QM? I'm in my first year of college, I haven't taken a QM class yet, so I only possess a cocktail knowledge of physics; I don't understand the mathematical models like you do. Of course if you have the time, I would like to hear about the details (also articles, books, lectures, etc. would suffice as well).

I sometimes think that QM is wrong as well. I suppose it is the rationalist side of me refuses to accept that the fundamental scale of the universe is indeterministic. One one hand it could be a cognitive or mathematical limitation that prevents us from, for example, determining a particles position and momentum simultaneously. Yet there is also the possibility that the behavior of subatomic particles really can only be determined probabilistically and the fact that Qm has been consistently verified only adds to the validity of this position. I don't think I understand enough to hold a strong position either way and I don't automatically write off theories that are counter-intuitive like Qm but I have a (unqualified) feeling that QM is just not right. /Ignorance.

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Originally Posted by tommo

How did I know that was going to happen :roll:

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What now?

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Originally Posted by stormcrow

Is it really true that quantum mechanics is complete? I suppose reconciling QM and GR is the only thing left to do. Also are you talking about the E8 model? As far as I knew supersymmetry has not been verified yet, I would be surprised if nature was really as symmetrical as the standard model predicts.

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I don't know anything about specific groups, I just know that predictions of unobservable particles such as the Higgs are just based on such things. I believe the first time this happened was when Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter. It is very bizarre to me that a mathematical model extrapolated from experience of matter successfully predicted something never before seen or conceived of in human history.

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Originally Posted by stormcrow

I sometimes think that QM is wrong as well. I suppose it is the rationalist side of me refuses to accept that the fundamental scale of the universe is indeterministic. One one hand it could be a cognitive or mathematical limitation that prevents us from, for example, determining a particles position and momentum simultaneously. Yet there is also the possibility that the behavior of subatomic particles really can only be determined probabilistically and the fact that Qm has been consistently verified only adds to the validity of this position. I don't think I understand enough to hold a strong position either way and I don't automatically write off theories that are counter-intuitive like Qm but I have a (unqualified) feeling that QM is just not right. /Ignorance.

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Things like relativity and certainly quantum mechanics do basically destroy the rationalist philosophy. I watched some lectures from Oxford a while back and the lecturer basically said that Hume was massively vindicated by the scientific discoveries which occurred long after his death (Darwin also put humans on a physical level), and that side of Kant's mission was left in tatters. I had always thought that.

The idea that there could be classical factors working unseen underneath QM is simply a misunderstanding, I'm afraid. I imagine the picture you have in your head is of a radioactive nucleus decaying at a random time, with possibly some unseen mechanism ticking underneath. This is the wrong picture. The crucial experiment for quantum mechanics is the double slit experiment, which, by the definitions of the terms, simply proves that particles are just waves of probability. Look up Feynman's discussion in his famous printed lectures. The empirical evidence is inherently irreconcilable with classical physics.

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Originally Posted by Xei

What now?

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You have an incessant need to say things like "x isn't that great, Y is really awesome"

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Originally Posted by Xei

It is very bizarre to me that a mathematical model extrapolated from experience of matter successfully predicted something never before seen or conceived of in human history.

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That is basically the exact definition of what I said before. Somehow you think predicting new particles is better.

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Originally Posted by Xei

What now?


I don't know anything about specific groups, I just know that predictions of unobservable particles such as the Higgs are just based on such things. I believe the first time this happened was when Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter. It is very bizarre to me that a mathematical model extrapolated from experience of matter successfully predicted something never before seen or conceived of in human history.


Things like relativity and certainly quantum mechanics do basically destroy the rationalist philosophy. I watched some lectures from Oxford a while back and the lecturer basically said that Hume was massively vindicated by the scientific discoveries which occurred long after his death (Darwin also put humans on a physical level), and that side of Kant's mission was left in tatters. I had always thought that.

The idea that there could be classical factors working unseen underneath QM is simply a misunderstanding, I'm afraid. I imagine the picture you have in your head is of a radioactive nucleus decaying at a random time, with possibly some unseen mechanism ticking underneath. This is the wrong picture. The crucial experiment for quantum mechanics is the double slit experiment, which, by the definitions of the terms, simply proves that particles are just waves of probability. Look up Feynman's discussion in his famous printed lectures. The empirical evidence is inherently irreconcilable with classical physics.

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This is a good point, I didn't take the existence of dark matter into account. We cannot directly observe dark matter but we can observe the affect its mass has on other astronomical objects and light through its gravitational pull. I suppose it is possible that the antiparticles have an affect on the physical universe that we are not aware of at the present moment.

I am for the most part a strict empiricist (I even hold the contention that math and logic are not a priori but in fact a posteriori) and am not a rationalist but I sometimes have trouble accepting the idea that the universe at its most fundamental scale is indeterministic. Also I would be most interested in watching those lectures if you can still find them.

Yes apparently Bell's theorem suggests that local hidden variables are incompatible with QM because SR asserts that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Have you ever heard of the De Broglie–Bohm interpretation of QM? It is a fundamentally deterministic interpretation of QM. I brought up the Uncertainty Principle earlier; so according to De Broglie-Bohm theory the velocity of a particle is contingent on the position of all of the other particles. I have only just started reading about this so excuse me if I am misrepresenting the theory.

Have you ever heard of the Quantum Zeno Effect? It has been empirically confirmed and basically suggests that an unstable particle will never decay if it is measured continuously. I am familiar with the double-slit experiment and acknowledge that it is (for now) irreconcilable with relativity. I admire Feynman so Ill check those lectures out. As a matter of fact I just found some good Feynman lectures the other day; dont know if you have seen these already but here ya go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=aAgcqgDc-YM

There are much, much more lectures by him on the same channel. I don't know if any of these are obsolete though....I would imagine a couple would be.

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Originally Posted by tommo

You have an incessant need to say things like "x isn't that great, Y is really awesome"

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If you say so. I'd really rather discuss the thread instead of myself. Considering I referred to Feynman's achievements in the context of stormcrow's questions a few posts later this doesn't seem very sensible, but whatever.

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That is basically the exact definition of what I said before. Somehow you think predicting new particles is better.

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Maybe you'd like to ask me why, then? Are you actually curious about this discussion or do you just want to ridicule somebody?

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Originally Posted by stormcrow

This is a good point, I didn't take the existence of dark matter into account. We cannot directly observe dark matter but we can observe the affect its mass has on other astronomical objects and light through its gravitational pull. I suppose it is possible that the antiparticles have an affect on the physical universe that we are not aware of at the present moment.

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I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this... dark matter is not the same as antimatter. Antimatter is not that hard to observe once you know where to look, it has charge.

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I am for the most part a strict empiricist (I even hold the contention that math and logic are not a priori but in fact a posteriori) and am not a rationalist but I sometimes have trouble accepting the idea that the universe at its most fundamental scale is indeterministic. Also I would be most interested in watching those lectures if you can still find them.

Yes apparently Bell's theorem suggests that local hidden variables are incompatible with QM because SR asserts that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Have you ever heard of the De Broglie–Bohm interpretation of QM? It is a fundamentally deterministic interpretation of QM. I brought up the Uncertainty Principle earlier; so according to De Broglie-Bohm theory the velocity of a particle is contingent on the position of all of the other particles. I have only just started reading about this so excuse me if I am misrepresenting the theory.

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I took a look at the Wikipedia article about it, but I don't really understand it very well. It's worth mentioning though that it sounds just as counter intuitive as the mainstream interpretations.

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Have you ever heard of the Quantum Zeno Effect? It has been empirically confirmed and basically suggests that an unstable particle will never decay if it is measured continuously. I am familiar with the double-slit experiment and acknowledge that it is (for now) irreconcilable with relativity. I admire Feynman so Ill check those lectures out. As a matter of fact I just found some good Feynman lectures the other day; dont know if you have seen these already but here ya go:

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Actually it is reconcilable with relativity, that was done by Dirac. What I meant to say was that it's not reconcilable with the traditional paradigm of causality.

The lectures I'm talking about are a set of books constructed from his lectures, they're called the Feynman Lectures on Physics. The discussion I'm talking about isn't very long, it's at the end of section 1 of volume 3. In fact you should probably just read the whole of section 1.

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Originally Posted by Xei

Maybe you'd like to ask me why, then? Are you actually curious about this discussion or do you just want to ridicule somebody?

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This is so, so grand coming from you.
Why, then, do you think it is somehow more of an achievement?

I never said it was more of an achievement, I just said that it was surprising. It's quite possible that the work that Feynman did was a more impressive intellectual achievement, it's just that once he had done the mathematics, it was not amazing that reality corresponded to it, because the axioms of that mathematics are chosen precisely because they directly correspond to the real world. With particle physics it is quite different, they are seeing a pattern and extrapolating very greatly from in on the basis of the aesthetic form of the mathematics itself, rather than anything observed.

It's true that Dirac was greatly motivated by finding beauty and simplicity in equations that described nature. What came as a surprise was that using matrices to describe the total energy of a mass was the only way to do it. It just happened that the matrices had cool looking symmetries implying the anti-matter.

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Originally Posted by Xei

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this... dark matter is not the same as antimatter. Antimatter is not that hard to observe once you know where to look, it has charge.

I took a look at the Wikipedia article about it, but I don't really understand it very well. It's worth mentioning though that it sounds just as counter intuitive as the mainstream interpretations.

Actually it is reconcilable with relativity, that was done by Dirac. What I meant to say was that it's not reconcilable with the traditional paradigm of causality.

The lectures I'm talking about are a set of books constructed from his lectures, they're called the Feynman Lectures on Physics. The discussion I'm talking about isn't very long, it's at the end of section 1 of volume 3. In fact you should probably just read the whole of section 1.

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Ahh shiiiiii. My blunder, I have been having some trouble distinguishing the two. Haven't we created antimatter like positrons in a lab? I don't understand the Bohmian interpretation very well either. I read Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" a while back where he explained it a bit. I didn't really get much from the book, about three chapters in, the equations just frazzled me and I haven't picked it up since.

From what I have been able to decipher; it is deterministic interpretation of QM that is at odds with the Copenhagen interpretation in that the particle and the wave exist simultaneously and the trajectory of the particle is deterministically guided by the wave function. Basically, the wave function is determined by hidden variables not measurement. It also does away with the need for post-hoc analysis's like the many-worlds interpretation.

Bohm uses a pretty beautiful analogy, in my opinion, to explain the hidden variables: basically imagine a dancer on a stage with two diagonal spotlights that meet where she is dancing. This creates two shadows; one to the left and one to the right of the dancer. But imagine that we cannot see the dancer, only the shadows. So we see two shadows only which appear to be separate (the particle and the wave) but the hidden variable (the dancer) is what is underlying the whole scenario by uniting the two shadows.

Needless to say, this theory is not accepted by many modern physicists. Von Neumann said that a deterministic interpretation of QM is mathematically impossible as well as being at odds with actual observations. Bohm's interpretation does seem a bit counter-intuitive yes.

I haven't heard of Dirac. Ill check him out.

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Originally Posted by stormcrow

Likewise the standard model predicts the existence of anti-particles, gravitons and the infamous higgs; all of which have not yet been verified.

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Anti-matter is definitely verified. For example the positron is an electron with a positive charge. Gravitons aren't part of the standard model I don't think. They are definitely part of an attempt to treat gravity as a quantum field. This is fundamentally wrong with respect to general relativity. Gravity is there viewed as just the curvature of space. This requires one to deal with coordinates coming from differentiable transformations of the space into itself. Quantum field theories all work on essentially a flat, static space-time. Or a torus if you just want to play with the math.

Spurios promises of detection aside, I'm a higgs doubter. I think that it's a symptom of trying to carry out a quantum theory of gravity in a special relativistic model. The trick is to quantize space itself. That's where mass/gravity (artificial distinction) is if we listen to Einstein.

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Also I thought Bell's theorem still presented unsolved problems in QM?

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There are also many relating to quantum information. But this is all operating within the context of a formal mathematical structure. Solving the problems are basically mathematical exercises. Experiments are only necessary to make sure that the mathematical structure continues to predict reality. If there was disagreement with experiment (there is) we would have to build a new structure (quantum field theories, still under construction).

Quantum states are vectors on the unit sphere in a complex hilbert space (Just like 3-d euclidian space only with complex coordinates and often with infinite dimensions)

Observables are hermitian operators on this space (their eigenvalues are all real)

The possible values for that observable (i.e. the numbers that we could measure) are the eigenvalues of that operator

The state "jumps" to the "eigenstate" (in math, eigenvector) associated with the eigenvalue measured.

The probability of measuring a given eigenstate is the complex norm (always real) of the projection of the premeasurement state on the given eigenstate. This is why we have to insist that our state-vectors are on the unit sphere. The unit sphere is just the set of states with their norm equal to one. The norm of the vector is just the sum of all its components. So by insisting that our states lay on the unit sphere, we insure a valid probability distribution.

This is all just linear algebra. You should be eligble in your second year or you can look at susskind's lectures on it where he introduces the math too. If we had TeX, I would gladly write an intro to linear algebra for you but it's a pain in unicode.

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Originally Posted by Xei

I never said it was more of an achievement, I just said that it was surprising. It's quite possible that the work that Feynman did was a more impressive intellectual achievement, it's just that once he had done the mathematics, it was not amazing that reality corresponded to it, because the axioms of that mathematics are chosen precisely because they directly correspond to the real world. With particle physics it is quite different, they are seeing a pattern and extrapolating very greatly from in on the basis of the aesthetic form of the mathematics itself, rather than anything observed.

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Ok, it seems we were just thinking about it differently. Since you're well accustomed to mathematics, probably.
The way I was thinking about it was that it's a fluid and he perfectly described the way it would move (which is so foreign to pretty much everything we experience in day to day life)
before anyone had even started to understand how it would behave.

With the particle physics and predicting new particles, there is the problem that these particles have not actually been verified though, right?
I'm way out of my depth here, as I've only really read a few publications on it, but no anti-particles or anti-matter has been observed yet.
If I'm way off on what you're saying here, just say so, there's no reason to discuss these things further if they're unrelated.

43:00 observe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xDQmIZTvFaI

48:16 - I know that pub well. :D

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Originally Posted by Wayfaerer

43:00 observe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xDQmIZTvFaI

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Nice!

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Originally Posted by Xei

48:16 - I know that pub well. :D

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lucky bastard

It's where Watson and Crick announced that they'd discovered the 'secret of life'. :3

In fact I know the site at 50:00 far better, it's the Centre for Mathematical Sciences where some lectures and supervisions (personal tutorials) are held, and where all the maths pros do their research. The roof of the main building is in the shape of a bell curve, and everything has some kind of geometric meaning... then when you get inside you are quite liable to be held up for about ten minutes every few paces, because they have displays of these awesome mathematical objects (representing groups or topology or whatnot). It's pretty sweet.

Have you ever been run down by Stephen Hawking? I hear he's quite the madman with his wheelchair.

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Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

1) no it's not "two dimensional". It's three atoms thick so it would have to have no width or no length to be considered 2-d.
2) "glass theorist"? That's a funny phrase.

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It can mean 2-dimensional with respect to some processes, like electron transport. Also, it can mean "can't be thinner". You can't have a sheet of graphene, for example, that's thinner than the width of a carbon atom.

I'm so jealous of your intellectual environment; I'm surrounded by engineers. D:

@cmind, I would consider that an abuse of terminology but I can see that being the case. The problem is that you are describing systems that can be modeled on two dimensions. That doesn't make the system itself 2d.

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Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

@cmind, I would consider that an abuse of terminology but I can see that being the case. The problem is that you are describing systems that can be modeled on two dimensions. That doesn't make the system itself 2d.

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Well, it's not an abuse of terminology given the context. Not all sciences must conform to a strictly geometric view of reality. For example, quantum mechanics doesn't really benefit from being able to picture the subatomic particles as physical objects with a set size and shape. It's just a jargon thing. If anything, it's the journalists' fault for not making the context more clear in their articles.