Slashdot Mirror
A Quasi-Quasicrystal
An anonymous reader sends along a link to a mindbending article in Science News on quasicrystals — odd materials with a structure partway between order and disorder. Now researchers have found something even odder: a material that's partway between a quasicrystal and a regular crystal. The order in the new structure is provided by the Fibonacci sequence. It was constructed with plastic beads and laser beams, so no new materials science inventions are on the horizon. "'We are absolutely sure that this structure should have properties that are not usual,' Mikhael says, because materials with odd structures almost always do. Now they just have to figure out what those properties are."
Hey, it has worked before...
That was the first thing I thought of too.
quasiquasicrystals, then quasiquasicrystalcrystals, then quasicrystalcrystalquasicrystalquasis...
You're dealing with forces beyond your understanding....
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
Apparently... that would be ALL forces then ? :p
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
we used to just split hairs.
Now we split crystals. And get quasicrystals. Which were supposed to be unusual.
And now we have quasi-quasicrystals. And then they're "not usual."
And next we can get something somewhere between a quasicrystal and a quasiquasicrystal.
I'd rather hear about what interesting/new discoveries come out of this strange material than just hear about the possibility of its existence.
In 10 years' time you'll be hearing about the quasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasicrystal, but we still won't know what the heck to do with them.
"We are absolutely sure that this structure should have properties that are not usual," Mikhael says, because materials with odd structures almost always do. Now they just have to figure out what those properties are.
Property #1: the ability to endow a grad student with his PhD and a sizable chunk of grant money.
I could be a random resistance element that could be used as a random number seed. Or it could be the mythical room temperature non-conductor.
Now they just have to figure out what those properties are.
1) Does it taste like chicken?
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
I have isolated a compound in my lab. I call it the Politiquasicrystal. I have determined that it can bend the truth with no expenditure of energy.
Almost but not entirely unlike crystal?
They don't exist anymore - they got bought out by Hawking's Bathrooms in 2004.
"Or make an off topic meme-based joke"
You mean, like teaching sharks with lasers on their heads to swim in formation so they could generate quasi-crystals as they went about their nefarious business? I am above such childish antics!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
We'd like to study these crystals, but we require more vespene gas!
So shut up and discuss the interesting stuff we have know now :D
Is that what they call quasi quasi moderation?
That's cwazsy.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The women that know me think otherwise... they ever say the hardest material known to them is my... head! :\
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Uh, mi fyngers hyt the wrong kei whyle tipyng!
"That was non- non-non non-heinous!"
I for one welcome our shark-toting Fibonacci based Hitler laser fiends, you insensitive clod!
And it would have worked too, if it weren't for the dupes (on Slashdot).
Both!
Maybe you should read TFA: it was both found and constructed, found because they didn't expect it, constructed because it's not something which occurs naturally.
Isn't the word for that "dumbfound"?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Thats almost but not entirely unlike a meme.
In Soviet Russia, insensitive sharks tote Fibonacci, you Hitler-based laser crystal!
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?