SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for takyon
How to melt gold at room temperature | Chalmers
When the tension rises, unexpected things can happen – not least when it comes to gold atoms. Researchers from, among others, Chalmers University of Technology, have now managed, for the first time, to make the surface of a gold object melt at room temperature.
Ludvig de Knoop, from Chalmers' Department of Physics, placed a small piece of gold in an electron microscope. Observing it at the highest level of magnification and increasing the electric field step-by-step to extremely high levels, he was interested to see how it influenced the gold atoms. It was when he studied the atoms in the recordings from the microscope, that he saw something exciting. The surface layers of gold had actually melted – at room temperature.
"I was really stunned by the discovery. This is an extraordinary phenomenon, and it gives us new, foundational knowledge of gold," says Ludvig de Knoop.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday November 29 2018, @04:26PM (3 children)
Maybe Grandma uses an induction pressure cooker... What's a coil or two between scientists and grannies?
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday November 29 2018, @05:06PM (2 children)
Pressure cookers use pressure to increase attainable temperatures. These folks are using tension to cause melting *without* changing the temperature.
(Score: 2) by leftover on Thursday November 29 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
That is what they *think* they did. If they monitor the surface temperature while they repeat the experiment they will have another amazing revelation.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Thursday November 29 2018, @06:03PM
The way I understood it, the skin effect" [wikipedia.org] is pressuring the electrons into the surface of the gold to the point the molecular bonds are breaking apart. At the quantum level the quarks are probably switching phases back and forth so quickly the atoms are going out of resonance with each other. Well, you'd have to ask a material scientist / theoretical physicist but technically that's also temperature of sorts. Though it's possible it's so efficient and isolated an effect that's nothing gets radiated... Though I doubt it.
compiling...