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World's Only Sample of Metallic Hydrogen Has Been Lost (ibtimes.co.uk)
New submitter drunkdrone quotes a report from International Business Times: A piece of rare meta poised to revolutionize modern technology and take humans into deep space has been lost in a laboratory mishap. The first and only sample of metallic hydrogen ever created on earth was the rarest material on the planet when it was developed by Harvard scientists in January this year, and had been dubbed "the holy grail of high pressure physics." The metal was created by subjecting liquid hydrogen to pressures greater that those at the center of the Earth. At this point, the molecular hydrogen breaks down and becomes an atomic solid. Scientists theorized that metallic hydrogen -- when used as a superconductor -- could have a transformative effect on modern electronics and revolutionize medicine, energy and transportation, as well as herald in a new age of consumer gadgets. Sadly, an attempt to study the properties of metallic hydrogen appears to have ended in catastrophe after one of the two diamonds being used like a vice to hold the tiny sample was obliterated. The metal was being held between two diamonds at a pressure of around 71.7 million pounds per square inch -- more than a third greater than at the Earth's core. According to The Independent, one of these diamonds shattered while the sample was being measured with a laser, and the metal was lost in the process.
As I recall the biggest problem they had in making the stuff in the first place was constantly shattering the diamonds when they tried to shine light through them. Also, the breathless talk of this revolutionizing every industry under the sun is tremendously overblown. Right now these are laboratory curiosities, they may very well amount to nothing.
I read the internet for the articles.
Books were written about it instead. When a subject is important, why settle for a journal? Le Vol des Insectes.
Go ahead and google it yourself. Oh, and the original claim was that bumblebees cant fly according to fixed wing aerodynamics, which is true.
The paper said that aerodynamics are unable to explain how bumblebees fly. There were no equations at the time (may still not be) that would allow wings that small to generate enough lift to hold the bee in the air - they're using properties of turbulence and other less well understood fluid dynamics to get their lift.