Solved: The mystery of the nanoscale crop circles

Friday, March 2, 2012 - 11:00 in Physics & Chemistry

(PhysOrg.com) -- Almost three years ago a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) was performing an experiment in which layers of gold mere nanometers (billionths of a meter) thick were being heated on a flat silicon surface and then allowed to cool. They watched in surprise as peculiar features expanded and changed on the screen of their electron microscope, finally settling into circles surrounded by irregular blisters.

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