clump

Fullerenes, also fondly known as buckyballs, are showing an ugly side. It appears that the hydrophobic, or water hating, carbon molecules clump together in water, forming aggregates of thousands of molecules.

And there are reports that these aggregates can be toxic. Now researchers have demonstrated that this behavior can be changed.

A team led by Peter J. Sadler at the University of Warwick and Sandeep Verma of the Indian Institute of Technology has been able to show that transferrin can clump together to form wormlike fibrils, a process which may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Huntington's, or Alzheimer's.

Instabilities in clouds of attracting matter are a well known phenomenon. In astrophysics, they lead to spectacular effects such as supernovae.

But also in a gas, when it is made up of tiny atomic magnets, the magnetic forces lead to instabilities. Such a gas cloud implodes due to the attractive interaction between the magnetic atoms.

The finding that attracting matter is unstable is known to everybody who has ever played with a bunch of magnets: they simply clump together.