Researchers at The University of Manchester have used graphene to measure an important and mysterious fundamental constant - and glimpse the foundations of the universe. The researchers from The School of Physics and Astronomy, led by Professor Andre Geim, have found that the world’s thinnest material absorbs a well-defined fraction of visible light, which allows the direct determination of the fine structure constant. Read more
I don't see how this is such a huge deal---the fine structure constant has been measured in other places as well, and is one of the ways that we know quantum field theory is correct---it is the most precisely known number in all of physics, and matches the QED calculation to somehing like 10 decimal places.
Is this universal constant any more mysterious than the speed of light or Avogadro's number? Perhaps even less so because it is dimensionless, like π and e.
Yeah, I think that this was just an over-enthusiastic copy editor who'd never studied physics or something.
