That, also, would be incorrect. The original major theory paper did the opposite: Nevill Gonzalez Szwacki, Arta Sadrzadeh, and Boris Yakobson predicted a stable B₈₀ fullerene cage in 2007, calling it an unusually stable boron cage and saying it was likely to self-assemble under proper conditions. What later theory challenged was not whether a B₈₀ cage could exist at all, but whether the soccer-ball B₈₀ buckyball was the lowest-energy structure. Then, of course, accuracy was sacrificed in the name of clicks.
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?
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.
Having only just learned what DFT is by reading this article, could someone familiar with the field opine on how significant it would be to discover a physical system that conflicts so much with its predictions?
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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
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.