Water Transformed Into Shiny, Golden Metal

posted by mrpg on Saturday July 31 2021, @10:00AM

from the go-sciences dept.

Water transformed into shiny, golden metal:

If you can’t turn water into gold like a good alchemist would, the next best thing might be to transform water itself into a shiny, metallic material. Researchers have achieved that feat by forming a thin layer of water around electron-sharing alkali metals.
The water stayed in a metallic state for a only few seconds, but the experiment did not require the high pressures that are normally needed to turn non-metallic materials into electrically conductive metals.
[...] In theory, most materials are capable of becoming metallic if put under enough pressure. Atoms or molecules can be squeezed together so tightly that they begin to share their outer electrons, which can then travel and conduct electricity as they do in a chunk of copper or iron. Geophysicists think that the centres of massive planets such as Neptune or Uranus host water in such a metallic state, and that high-pressure metallic hydrogen can even become a superconductor, able to conduct electricity without any resistance.

Journal References:
1.) Castelvecchi, Davide. Water transformed into shiny, golden metal, (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-02065-w)
2.) Mason, Philip E., Schewe, H. Christian, Buttersack, Tillmann, et al. Spectroscopic evidence for a gold-coloured metallic water solution, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03646-5)
3.) Tillmann Buttersack, Philip E. Mason, Ryan S. McMullen, et al. Photoelectron spectra of alkali metal–ammonia microjets: From blue electrolyte to bronze metal [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz7607)
4.) Mason, Philip E., Uhlig, Frank, Vaněk, Václav, et al. Coulomb explosion during the early stages of the reaction of alkali metals with water, Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2161)

Original Submission

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