Ockham's razor at work ... (sometimes Ock. doesn't work; after all it is not a 'law' -but in the case of the putative fusion of carbon to iron, there is little doubt that it provides a close and comfortable shave; and 'conserves a few miracles' as well. Magnetic Soot; July 2004; Scientific American Magazine; by Graham P. Collins Recent decades have seen great interest in novel carbon structures such as buckyballs and nanotubes. In 1997 researchers in Australia discovered yet another form of carbon: a spidery, fractal-like composition they dubbed nano-foam. At this year's March meeting of the American Physical Society, the group reported that this gossamer substance is ferromagnetic (like iron), the only type of pure carbon that has that property. The foam's magnetic behavior suggests that innovative uses might be possible, such as serving as a contrast-enhancing agent in magnetic resonance imaging. Andrei V. Rode and his co-workers at the Australian National University in Canberra created carbon nano-foam when they blasted a glassy form of carbon with a series of short laser pulses in a container filled with inert argon gas. The pulses produced a plume of carbon vapor that settled as a thin layer on the vessel walls. To the naked eye, it looks like a conventional soot deposit. End of abstract.
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