While exciting, please note that they only were able to record a photoelectron spectrum and back this up with a lot of theoretical work, which is far from a conclusive proof of identity. Right now we know they made some yet-unknowm boron compound with a very weird, symmetrical, photoelectron spectrum... but imo the information density in these spectra isnt super high.
Without a mass spectrum (telling you at the very least that they made a pure compound of 80 boron atoms) or even better a bulk synthesis route (extremely difficult, but giving you an amount of compound you can actually look at & investigate further) this should be filed under "tantalizing discovery but no definitive proof of existence".
I'd love to be proven wrong tho in my scepticism because this is one exciting molecule.
Boron always seemed like an under-studied element to me. Starting from the bottom, hydrogen of course is very well understood, helium not useful for much, lithium used for many things, and beryllium interesting but unfortunately toxic. Next is boron. Low toxicity, light weight, interesting electron configuration. Compounds like boron nitride and boron carbide have remarkable properties, but seem to get less attention than carbon. Not sure why.
> helium not useful for much
Maybe not for a chemist, but as a physicist it’s certainly useful. Liquid He cooling, Bose-Einstein condensation, superfluidity, p-wave triplet pairing in He-3, etc. while being basically chemically inert!
Complete title is:
"Introducing boron buckyballs: Theory predicts B80 cages can’t be made. Experimentalists just proved otherwise"
Yes but it contradicts the article
this boronic thing (negative ion, really) they _might have seen_ has 241 (valence) electrons..
You'd expect a nice 240 given the symmetry, not a prime number
Or maybe a less baity reason is those hints of B_80^- have captured H+ "nuclei", turning into almolecular atoms!
Not oxyboronic at all
It is a lot less uniform than carbon c60. I wonder what weird properties that will give it.
It's quite "uniform" (symmetrical). It's essentially the same structure as the 60-atom ball, but with an additional atom at the centre of each hexagon.
Curious to see when a post from OpenAI will appear with the corrected theory or something. This seems to be an ideal scenario for them to go after another scientific case. They have the theory, they have the experimental proof that it’s wrong, exactly what you need for an agentic loop to do its work.
Or maybe what works in math doesn’t work with chemistry?
but is it worth the effort from a PR perspective for them? I guess we will have to wait and see.
This is surely extremely exciting for theorists then!
I wonder what you can do with B80?
I'm waiting for it to show up in Derek Lowe's delightful blog, "Things I will not work with."
I don't see why it would. Did C60? Are fullerenes known for unusual reactivity? I'd expect the opposite, if anything.
No, but boron compounds are notoriously reactive and unstable. My dad, brother, and spouse, all worked on boron chemistry during their careers. So I learned a little bit about it, though I'm not a chemist myself. You treat every new boron compound as if it's about to detonate.