Splitting Water
Brand new substance created from water
- 13:27 27 October 2006
- NewScientist.com news service
- Rob Edwards
If you think we know all there is to know about water, think again. Scientists claim they have created a totally new alloy of hydrogen and oxygen molecules by splitting water.
It takes high-energy X-rays and an extremely high pressure, but the end result is a solid mixture of H2 and 02 that has never been identified before, they say. The discovery could change our understanding of the complex chemistry of water.
The new alloy is "a highly energetic material", says Wendy Mao at Los Alamos National Laboratory, US, who led the research. "It may help us find a way of storing energy."
Mao’s team subjected water to a pressure 170,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure at sea level. Then they bombarded it with X-rays, causing the water molecules to split and reform into a previously unknown crystalline solid made of H2 molecules and 02 molecules.
Just right...
posted by Indigobusiness @ Monday, October 30, 2006
3 Comments
3 Comments:
How do they come up with these experiments? Do they do brainstorms in their labs where they're like, well, what shall we do today? I know - let's get some... some water, okay, and then we'll subject it to high pressure... let's say 100,000 times atmosphere... no, I say 170,000 times... okay... and then bombard it with microwaves... no, not microwaves, we did microwaves last week... let's do x-rays... and see what happens...
So what would happen if we pressurised cookies & cream flavoured ice-cream to 57,000 atmospheres and held it upside-down and bombarded it with infra-red light? Or carbon at 350,000 atmospheres and gave it a good shake and then bombarded it with UHF radio waves? The secret of the universe may be hidden in experiments like these, who knows...
The universe has no secrets, but I figure these sorts of discoveries are always serendipitous...like discovering the cure for hiccups by sticking a finger up an asshole.
No secrets, just riddles.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home