Claimed solid metallic hydrogen sample was lost
by noreply@blogger.com (brian wang) from NextBigFuture.com on (#2ESWP)
The claimed solid metallic hydrogen sample has been lost on February 11. It was being stored at temperatures around 80 Kelvin (-193 degrees Celsius and -316 degrees Fahrenheit), and at incredibly high pressures between two diamonds in a type of vice.
Further testing caused the diamonds to break and the vice to fail, and the researchers haven't been able to find a trace of the metallic hydrogen since.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's been destroyed - the sample was only around 1.5 micrometres thick, and 10 micrometres in diameter - a fifth the diameter of a strand of human hair - so it's possible it's stable somewhere and missing.
But it's also a possibility that, once the pressure of the diamond vice broke, the hydrogen dissipated back into a gas, which suggests that the material isn't stable at room pressure.
The team was preparing to pack up the sample and move it to the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago for further testing.
Silvera and his Harvard team claimed to create solid metallic hydrogen October last year, using two synthetic diamonds as a type of vice to squeeze the sample.
As the pressure increased, the researchers actually saw with their own eyes as the sample turned from transparent, to dark, and then to shiny and metallic.
It was a huge deal, not just as a proof-of-concept, but because metallic hydrogen is predicted to have some pretty crazy and useful properties - like being a superconductor, capable of carrying current without resistance.
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Further testing caused the diamonds to break and the vice to fail, and the researchers haven't been able to find a trace of the metallic hydrogen since.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's been destroyed - the sample was only around 1.5 micrometres thick, and 10 micrometres in diameter - a fifth the diameter of a strand of human hair - so it's possible it's stable somewhere and missing.
But it's also a possibility that, once the pressure of the diamond vice broke, the hydrogen dissipated back into a gas, which suggests that the material isn't stable at room pressure.
The team was preparing to pack up the sample and move it to the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago for further testing.
Silvera and his Harvard team claimed to create solid metallic hydrogen October last year, using two synthetic diamonds as a type of vice to squeeze the sample.
As the pressure increased, the researchers actually saw with their own eyes as the sample turned from transparent, to dark, and then to shiny and metallic.
It was a huge deal, not just as a proof-of-concept, but because metallic hydrogen is predicted to have some pretty crazy and useful properties - like being a superconductor, capable of carrying current without resistance.
Read more