“Unlocking the Future: The Astonishing Applications of a £106 Million Substance That Could Change Everything!”

You ever wonder what could possibly justify a jaw-dropping price tag of £106 million for a single gram of something that looks like powdered sugar? Well, buckle up, because the substance in question is no ordinary dust; it’s called Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerene. According to the brainiacs at the University of Oxford, it’s officially dubbed the “most expensive thing on Earth.” This little miracle powder has the potential to transform the tech landscape as we know it! Scientists are aiming high, trying to design ultra-compact atomic clocks that might eventually fit right into your smartphone! So, next time someone mentions dropping six figures on something that seems ridiculous, just remember: it could be the key to revolutionizing everything from GPS navigation to driverless cars. Curious to dive deeper into this fascinating subject? LEARN MORE.

You might think that exchanging a staggering sum like £106,000,000 for one measly gram of a ‘valuable’ substance is a bum deal, but you’d be dead wrong.

That’s because the potential of this extraordinary powder is huge – and anyone with pockets deep enough to get their hands on it could completely change the face of technology.

It’s called Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerene and according to the University of Oxford, it’s the ‘most expensive thing on Earth‘.

Scientists explained they have developed the new material in the hopes they could do the impossible and create incredibly small, highly accurate atomic clocks, which use the vibrations of atoms to measure time.

Usually, these are the size of a room, so they’re not exactly portable.

A single gram of the substance will set you back a whopping £106,000,000 (University of Oxford/Getty)

The boffins at Oxford explained that these atomic clocks are an ‘integral’ part of GPS systems, which a lot of us rely on everyday to get from A to B, and creating mini-versions of them could ‘revolutionise’ navigation data.

If we could all have mobile atomic clocks, we would be able to pinpoint the location of something extremely accurately, with ease – and experts even reckon the substance will even be in smartphones at some point.

Dr Kyriakos Porfyrakis, who has been working on the substance since 2001, previously told the Telegraph: “Imagine a miniaturised atomic clock that you could carry around in your smartphone. This is the next revolution for mobile.”

The ‘fullerene’ part of Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerene refers to it’s structure, as it is a ‘cage’ of carbon atoms which have a nitrogen atom inside them.

Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerene has a ‘cage-like’ structure (Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

Its name is a nod to architect and philosopher Richard Buckminster Fuller, who was known for his designs featuring distinctive interlocking triangles in a geodesic dome.

But that’s not the interesting part – it’s what the material could do for the world which is really getting people excited.

These atomic clocks are the most accurate time-keeping system on the planet, which could make the GPS navigation on driverless cars accurate to 1mm, which is pretty damn cool.

At the moment, the technology is only accurate within a few yards, which poses an issue when it comes to tracking and controlling these kind of motors – however, with the help of Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerene, this could change.

Thanks to the tiny atomic clock, driverless cars could become a lot more reliable and we could be seeing a lot more of them on the roads in the future.

It could revolutionise GPS data and make driverless cars commonplace (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The Oxford scientists explained: “The accuracy of on-board atomic clocks could help GPS systems track a car’s location, even where the GPS signal is weak such as through tunnels, make remote driving suddenly a whole lot safer.”

Lucius Cary, a director of the Oxford Technology SEIS fund, also previously told the Telegraph that there would be ‘lots of applications for this technology’, although the driving-related one was the logical first step.

“The most obvious is in controlling autonomous vehicles,” he said. “If two cars are coming towards each other on a country lane, knowing where they are to within 2m is not enough but to 1mm it is enough.”

However, Dr Porfyrakis warned that atomic clocks won’t be part of our everyday lives for a good while yet.

He added: “It will take a few years to finalise this research project.

“If there will be a final product, it should be miniature enough to go into portable devices.”

At least we’ve got something to look forward to, eh lads?