So lets talk about Graphene

Sick of buying a brand new, shiny touch screen phone, just for it to get scratched and broken. That all might change over the next few years now that scientist have discovered Graphene. In 2020 you may be using Ironman technology in your car as your 4 atom wide, transparent touch screen computer powers away.

Graphene is the first 2 dimensional material and is the thinnest material ever obtained and also the lightest! What makes Graphene truly awesome, and the reason that it is on this site is because it is the strongest material known to man, it is even stronger that diamond (No more diamond pickaxes in Minecraft) and 300 times stronger than steal! Graphene is also a conductive material and is transparent. So that's pretty much everything, but can it bend? Well yes, Graphene is also bendable and can take any form you want!

This new material opens up so many new possibilities for making airliners, mobile phones that are paper thin pretty much anything you can imagine. Graphene can also be turned into many more materials that are one atom thin.

This material is being mass produced right now by many big companies so you can expect to see Graphene any time soon. What is also very good is that these devices may be very cheap due to the fact that Graphene is not rare, in fact every time you write with your pencil, you produce little bits of Graphene!

Want to find out more, check out these videos:

So what am I reading all about right now?

The last couple of days I have been fascinated by the theories behind Dark Matter and Dark energy. If you don't know what these are then please read on as I think they are the most interesting thing in all of science.

People have always thought that space was just...well SPACE! In fact, in the old times some people were even sentenced to death for saying otherwise, but just recently scientist have discovered that this is not the case at all! People are now beginning to believe and show evidence that around 73% of the whole universe is actually made up of a substance known as Dark Energy, nobody actually knows what this stuff is, but some people believe that it is what causes the universe to expand, and keep expanding. This is because Dark Energy pretty much IS space, so as the universe expands, more and more Dark Energy is created. However other scientist believe that Dark Energy is also going to make the Universe shrink, and eventually disappear into nothing. They say that when the universe gets so small that it disappears the Big Bang will occur again and that it is a continuous cycle. I personally don't like this explanation and agree more so with the first statement, that Dark Energy causes the universe to expand. Although this theory also has a not so nice ending, as scientists say that if the universe continually expands (which it is doing more and more rapidly) the whole universe will go into a deep freeze of absolute zero, killing all intelligent life.

But enough of me telling you the facts, here is a real scientist. Dr Michio Kaku
This video will cover more that what I have been talking about but is great stuff!

If you dont want to watch a video, or if you just want to read it all again, here it is:
"In cosmology we believe that the universe started off in a big bang 13.7 billion years

ago. All alternatives have been pretty much ruled out. Steady state theories, other alternatives

have been ruled out. However, how will the universe end? We have several possibilities.

One possibility is a big crunch when the universe squashes together in a gigantic ball of flame

and maybe bangs once again. Another possibility is the big freeze, that the universe expands

and just keeps on going and we're all going to freeze to death and we're all going to

die when the universe reaches near absolute zero. Then there is something called the big

rip where the universe goes into an exponential expansion and expands so rapidly that the

distant galaxies can no longer be seen because they travel faster than the speed of light,

that even the distant galaxies break the light barrier, and that's called the big rip, meaning

that the night sky will be totally black except for some of the nearby stars.

Which of the three alternatives is the fate of the universe? Well, the short answer is

we don't know. However, what we do know is that the universe is undergoing an exponential

runaway expansion. The universe at the present time is careening out of control. Every astronomy

textbook says that there was a big bang. The universe is expanding, but it's slowing down.

It also says that the universe is mainly made out of atoms. Every textbook says that. The

universe is made out of atoms. The universe is expanding, but slowing down. Both are wrong.

We have to rewrite every single high school textbook on the planet earth. The universe

is not mainly made out of atoms.

Four percent of the universe is made out of atoms, just four percent. 23% is made out

of dark matter. 73%, which makes up most of the universe, is dark energy, and unfortunately,

we are clueless as to what dark energy is and what dark matter is. In fact, if you ever

find out what dark energy and dark matter is, be sure to tell me first.

Now why is that important? Because the amount of matter and energy in the universe determines

the rate of expansion. We now know there is a lot more dark energy than we previously

thought. Therefore, the universe is undergoing an inflationary exponential expansion. It

is in a runaway mode, but here is the catch: we don't know how long that runaway mode is

going to last. Some people say that it's temporary. We're in this huge expansion right now, exponential

expansion, but it's going to reverse itself. Instead of a red shift, we'll have a blue

shift as the universe collapses. At the present time we simply don't know. Why don't we know?

Because we don't know what dark energy is. In fact, if you were to try to write down

a theory of dark energy, your number would not correspond to the data by a mismatch of

to the 120. That is the largest mismatch in the history of science. There is no mismatch

bigger than 10 to the 120. So this is a mystery. Until we solve the mystery of dark energy,

we do not know the ultimate fate of the universe.

My personal thoughts are that perhaps we will continue with this exponential expansion and

perhaps go into a big rip mode and at that point all intelligent life in the universe

will die. All the tears and all the struggles and all the heartbreak of humanity since we

rose from the swamp, it's all for nothing. Why should you bother to wake up tomorrow

knowing that we're all going to die billions and billions of years from now when the universe

turns to absolute zero, when the stars blink out, when we have nothing but neutron stars

and black holes? What does it all mean anyway, if we're all going to die in a big rip?

Well, my personal attitude is that when the universe is about to die, why not leave the

universe? Trillions of years from now, we will have the ability to bend space and time

into a pretzel. We'll be able to tie space into knots. We'll be what is called a type

three, maybe a type four civilization, a galactic civilization with the capability of harnessing

galactic power. At that point, when the universe becomes so cold that all life is freezing

to death, I say let us escape the universe, go into hyperspace and go to another universe."