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from the Potassium-Sodium-Lithium-Hydrium? dept.
After Decades of Hunting, Physicists Claim They've Made Quantum Material from Depths of Jupiter
A team of French researchers has posted a paper online in which they claim to have achieved the holy grail of extreme-pressure materials science: creating metallic hydrogen in a laboratory.
Physicists have suspected since the 1930s that under extreme pressures, hydrogen atoms — the lightest atoms on the periodic table, containing just a single proton each in the nuclei — might radically change their properties. Under normal circumstances, hydrogen doesn't conduct electricity well and tends to pair with other hydrogen atoms — much like oxygen does. But physicists believe that, subject to enough pressure, hydrogen will act as an alkali metal — a group of elements, including lithium and sodium, that each have a single electron in their outermost orbitals, which they exchange very easily. The whole periodic table is organized around this idea, with hydrogen placed above the other alkali metals in the first column. But the effect has never been conclusively seen in a laboratory.
Now, in a paper posted June 13 to the preprint journal arXiv, a team of researchers led by Paul Loubeyre of the French Atomic Energy Commission claims to have pulled it off. Crushed between the points of two diamonds to about 4.2 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level (425 gigapascals), they say their sample of hydrogen demonstrated metallic properties.
Also at Gizmodo and ScienceAlert.
Previously: Creation of Jupiter Interior, a Step Towards Room Temperature Superconductivity
Harvard Researchers Report Production and Analysis of Solid Metallic Hydrogen
Solid Metallic Hydrogen, Once Theory, Becomes Reality -- or Maybe Not?
Harvard University's Metallic Hydrogen Sample "Disappeared" or Ruined
Related: New Evidence of Superconductivity at Near Room Temperature
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 03 2019, @01:28AM
Yeah, it didn't suck too bad [youtube.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday July 03 2019, @02:23AM
Stupid English Knights...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGXx56WqqJw [youtube.com]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @09:33AM (5 children)
So what are they going to do with "metallic hydrogen"? I mean, it's not transparent aluminum, for Scotty's sake! Are they going to discover "cold fusion"? Properly diagnose Lyme disease? Perhaps a perpetual motion machine, for endless energy!
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Wednesday July 03 2019, @10:43AM
Jovian Rovers!
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 03 2019, @02:18PM
They're going to shove it down your throat.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday July 03 2019, @02:51PM
Hydrogen is a fantastic rocket fuel, but it is very bulky and it likes to wiggle its way out of tiny little crevices. If you could make a solid form of hydrogen that would go a long way towards making H2 rockets more practical.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday July 03 2019, @02:56PM
Haha, someone should have told them nobody would find their research intersting before they went to all that trouble!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:11PM
But... transparent aluminum is a thing.
Anyway, I don't care what it is, if it's superconductive at room temperature I'll take it.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday July 04 2019, @12:13PM
come on, we all know what truly happened:
- atom
- what
- you alkali metal now
- why
- because we theorized so
- so what
- and we put you in a place for alkali metals in the periodic table
- the periodic what
- ok ok i got it *increases pressure*
- hey hey what's this
- pressure, honey
- i feel dizzy
- so you alkali now
- it's not... in ... my ... nature
- we'll see *increases pressure*
- stop it please it hurts
- only when you alkali
- OK OK WHATEVER IM ALKALI GET THAT FUCKING ELECTRON SPINNING AAAAAAAGGHHHHH
- i win
Account abandoned.