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80 years late, scientists finally turn hydrogen into a metal

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Shard

XBLAnnoyance
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/80-years-late-scientists-finally-turn-hydrogen-into-a-metal/

Much more at the jump above.

If you don't go far enough in chemistry, it's easy to get the impression that metallicity is an innate property of certain elements. But "metallic" is simply defined as substances with electrons that can move around easily. These electrons give metals properties like good conductivity and an opaque, shiny appearance. But these traits are not exclusive to specific elements; carbon nanotubes can be metallic, and elements like sulfur become metallic under sufficient pressure.

In 1935, scientists predicted that the simplest element, hydrogen, could also become metallic under pressure, and they calculated that it would take 25 GigaPascals to force this transition (each Gigapascal is about 10,000 atmospheres of pressure). That estimate, in the words of the people who have finally made metallic hydrogen, "was way off." It took until last year for us to reach pressures where the normal form of hydrogen started breaking down into individual atoms—at 380 GigaPascals. Now, a pair of Harvard researchers has upped the pressure quite a bit more, and they have finally made hydrogen into a metal.


All of these high-pressure studies rely on what are called diamond anvils. This hardware places small samples between two diamonds, which are hard enough to stand up to extreme pressure. As the diamonds are forced together, the pressure keeps going up.
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H

Hypemaster

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latest
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Ho, holy shit! It might be metastable... If it truly is, it would be a really big thing for spacecraft, as metastable metallic hydrogen would be really good reaction mass for rockets.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
mugurumakensei said:
For the uninitiated that's 4.9 million times atmospheric pressure.
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And for further comparison, roughly 10 meters of water adds one atmosphere of pressure (ie 10m is 2x pressure, 5000m is 500 atmospheres, etc.).
And Venus atmosphere has pressure of... what, 80 Earth atmospheres? Something like that anyway.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
super-heated plasma said:
Cool. So what are the practical applications for this?
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Bitmap Frogs said:
Possibly a room temperature superconductor, I think.
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Possible, but that is merely theoretical. Also, we can't be sure the thing can exist in room temperature.

The test seems to indicate it could be metastable, it was warmed from 15K (where it was created) to 83K with no change. But that doesn't mean it can be warmed to 270K. Also, i presume the pressure was kept high.


Another good use would be rocket reaction mass. Theoretically it should have excellent delta V, far above what chemical rocket can have, by an order of magnitude at least.
You store metastable metallic hydrogen, and then revert it to gaseous state to create thrust. Such thing could be a revolution for (comparatively short-distance) space travel.
 
X

Xiaoki

Member
Stinkles said:
Don't they suspect that Jupiter has a partially metallic hydrogen core?
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Yes

So does the Sun

And the Sun isn't a giant ball of fire like people think it is, it's a giant fusion reactor. It fuses hydrogen into helium, so maybe this is the first step to making a power source for a fusion power generator. Or the Earth's destruction.

Also, Jupiter and the Sun are actually pretty similar but the Sun is a bit over 1000 times more massive than Jupiter.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Xiaoki said:
Yes

So does the Sun

And the Sun isn't a giant ball of fire like people think it is, it's a giant fusion reactor. It fuses hydrogen into helium, so maybe this is the first step to making a power source for a fusion power generator. Or the Earth's destruction.

Also, Jupiter and the Sun are actually pretty similar but the Sun is a bit over 1000 times more massive than Jupiter.
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Pretty sure hydrogen (and helium) at sun's core is't metallic but plasma. Despite the pressure. Too hot (15 million kelvin or so) for things to be metallic despite the pressure. Fusion cannot happen in metallic state.

Also, who the fuck thinks the sun is merely a giant fireball?
 
X

Xiaoki

Member
Woorloog said:
Pretty sure hydrogen (and helium) at sun's core is't metallic but plasma. Despite the pressure. Too hot (15 million kelvin or so) for things to be metallic despite the pressure. Fusion cannot happen in metallic state.

Also, who the fuck thinks the sun is merely a giant fireball?
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The Sun's core is 15 million degrees Celsius.

Also, the term "metallic" is just used to describe it's conductivity.

So, heat has nothing to do with it. At the core the pressure is so great it (in layman's terms) squeezes the electrons out of the hydrogen atoms.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Xiaoki said:
The Sun's core is 15 million degrees Celsius.

Also, the term "metallic" is just used to describe it's conductivity.

So, heat has nothing to do with it. At the core the pressure is so great it (in layman's terms) squeezes the electrons out of the hydrogen atoms.
Click to expand...

15 million kelvin is just as accurate. Difference of 273.15 degrees is utterly irrelevant at that point. (I prefer talking about kelvins in scientific context that aren't too close to room temperature, hence my use of kelvins rather than celsius.)

But still, it seems there is difference between metallic hydrogen (even if it is not quite "metal" at that point) and plasma. Though perhaps the difference is somewhat... irrelevant, at such extreme conditions as the sun's core has.

Ah, well, whatever. Still neat stuff.
 
A

All Possible Ways

Member
Xiaoki said:
Yes

So does the Sun

And the Sun isn't a giant ball of fire like people think it is, it's a giant fusion reactor. It fuses hydrogen into helium, so maybe this is the first step to making a power source for a fusion power generator. Or the Earth's destruction.

Also, Jupiter and the Sun are actually pretty similar but the Sun is a bit over 1000 times more massive than Jupiter.
Click to expand...

Look at the Hydrogen phase diagram

log_phase_diagram08.png


The sun's core is at T~10^7 K and density~10^2 g/cm^3, so it's above the blue line, so it's a plasma, not metallic.
 
P

poppedcollar69

Member
Woorloog said:
And for further comparison, roughly 10 meters of water adds one atmosphere of pressure (ie 10m is 2x pressure, 5000m is 500 atmospheres, etc.)
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So if my calculators are correct, if the ocean was as deep as the distance from the earth to the moon, the pressure at the very bottom would.... Still be just shy of the pressure required to metalicize hydrogen
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
poppedcollar69 said:
So if my calculators are correct, if the ocean was as deep as the distance from the earth to the moon, the pressure at the very bottom would.... Still be just shy of the pressure required to metalicize hydrogen
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Well, at that scale, gravity would start to have effect, i think. But ignoring that...

Earth-moon distance is 384,400 km, or 384,400,000 meters... So, one atmosphere per 10 meters, so 384,400,000/10=38,440,000 atmospheres.

One atmospheric pressure is roughly 101,325 pascals. 38,440,000x101,325=3,894,933,000,000 pascals. 3,894 gigapascals, it seems, if i calculated/converted correctly. If so, that would be many times as much pressure... Did i make a mistake?

EDIT Probably no mistake. A planet with diameter of 384,400 km would be really, really big. That is more than twice Jupiter's diameter, and a bit over the Sun's diameter.

EDIT2 Oh, wait, not diameter, radius. Oh, fuck, such planet would be bigger than the Sun, and thus it would have to be a star almost certainly.
 
I

Ishan

Junior Member
Woorloog said:
Well, at that scale, gravity would start to have effect, i think. But ignoring that...

Earth-moon distance is 384,400 km, or 384,400,000 meters... So, one atmosphere per 10 meters, so 384,400,000/10=38,440,000 atmospheres.

One atmospheric pressure is roughly 101,325 pascals. 38,440,000x101,325=3,894,933,000,000 pascals. 3,894 gigapascals, it seems, if i calculated/converted correctly. If so, that would be many times as much pressure... Did i make a mistake?

EDIT Probably no mistake. A planet with diameter of 384,400 km would be really, really big. That is more than twice Jupiter's diameter, and a bit over the Sun's diameter.

EDIT2 Oh, wait, not diameter, radius. Oh, fuck, such planet would be bigger than the Sun, and thus it would have to be a star almost certainly.
Click to expand...
Suns diameter is 1392'000 km so it's smaller than the sun
 
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