World record for longest carbon–carbon bond broken

Some wags suggest that size doesn’t matter, but tell that to the chemists who have just broken the world record for the longest carbon–carbon bond ever made. Now, Xu-Qiong Xiao and his team at Hangzhou Normal University, China have synthesised a series of 1,2-diamino-o-carboranes that have carbon–carbon bonds in their inner cluster that range from a mere 0.16Å to just over 1.93Å. The latter is a staggering length given the received wisdom on carbon–carbon bonds…