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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the unsinkable-beer-can dept.

http://aluminiuminsider.com/researchers-confirm-discovery-floating-aluminium/

Like most common metals, aluminium lacks natural buoyancy. However, with a little rearranging of the metal’s natural molecular structure, one can produce an ultra-light crystalline form of the metal that is actually less dense than water and, as a result, floats upon it.

Research conducted by Utah State University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry professor Alexander Boldyrev and published in the latest issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry C has yielded just such a crystalline form using computational modeling.

“My colleagues’ approach to this challenge was very innovative,” explained Boldyrev. “They started with a known crystal lattice, in this case, a diamond, and substituted every carbon atom with an aluminum tetrahedron.”

Boldyrev’s colleagues, namely Iliya Getmanskii, Vitaliy Koval, Rusian Minyaev, and Vladimir Minkin of Southern Federal University in Rostov-on Don, Russia, confirmed the structure which is metastable and has a density of 0.61 grams per cubic centimeter. By comparison, conventional aluminium possesses a density of 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter.


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  • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @10:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @10:14AM (#573016)

    This is obviously fake Russian propaganda meant to interfere in the US's democratic metallurgy process, and Julian Assange is clearly working behind the scenes on behalf of the FSB and GRU.

    I demand congressional hearings into this outrageous foreign corruption of our free smelting system by attempting to influence American molecules in the way they crystallize. Has Jared Kushner ever been in Rostov? Does Donald Trump use aluminum in his airplanes?

    How can we allow sinister Russian agents like biochemistry professor Alexander Boldyrev to taint our precious bodily metals?

    /parody

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