Nobel prize

Why Graphene hasn't taken over the world

Why Graphene Hasn’t Taken Over the World- Yet

Graphene burst into the general consciousness in 2010, when the Nobel Prize committee brought its discovery to the attention of the world with its almost sci-fi inspired properties. Graphene is the strongest material ever tested, efficiently conducts heat and electricity, can be levitated by neodymium magnets and is nearly transparent. Graphene is a form of carbon that is so thin it is actually just a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Since it is only a single atom thick it is considered two-dimensional rather than three dimensional.

Scientists had theorized about graphene for years, and although it had been unintentionally produced in small quantities for centuries it was not mass produced. It was originally observed via electron microscopes in 1962, but it was studied only while supported on a metal surface.

Then in 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov  were able to isolate and further study it at the University of Manchester. This work resulted in them  winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the material graphene.”

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Why Investors Shouldn’t Listen to Out-of-Touch-with-Reality Theorists

The efficient market theory says that you can’t really beat the market because the market already has all the information available baked into the cake. So why bother? If this were true Warren Buffet, George Soros, Peter Lynch, and John Templeton would never have become billionaires. And interestingly each of these men made their fortunes directly betting against the efficient market theory.
Buffet, Lynch and Templeton were value investors looking for value where the market saw none and then waiting until the market came to its senses and Soros looked at broad trends and then made huge bets on unexpected events. From 1973 through the late 1980s, he ran his own hedge fund,  often racking up returns of more than 30% per year and twice posting annual returns of more than 100% while the overall market averaged 10%. According to Investopedia, Soros “believed that financial markets can best be described as chaotic.” Quite the opposite of an efficient market.

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