Posted on 04/25/2016 8:48:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
"This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes," said lead researcher Alexander Kolesnikov.
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have observed water molecules behaving unlike gas, liquid or solid states.
Researchers discovered the new state while subjecting water molecules to extreme confinement.
When water molecules were pushed into nanoscale tubes or channels in the mineral beryl, the water molecules become delocalized around a ring, with each molecule adopting "an unusual double top-like shape."
Researchers described the new molecular state in the journal Physical Review Letters.
"This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are delocalized and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time," lead study author Alexander Kolesnikov, of ORNL's Chemical and Engineering Materials Division, said in news release. "It's one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience."
This spreading of water molecules when confined was not just unexpected, it breaks the rules of classical physics. The behavior, known as "tunneling," describes a molecule passing through a barrier without the energy required to do so -- in other words, it defies physics.
"The average kinetic energy of the water protons directly obtained from the neutron experiment is a measure of their motion at almost absolute zero temperature and is about 30 percent less than it is in bulk liquid or solid water," Kolesnikov said. "This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes."
Because the confinement measured at ORNL is comparable to the experience of water molecules trapped in rocks, soil and cell walls, the novel findings are expected to have real-world impact on the discussions happening within a variety of scientific disciplines -- cellular biology, geology and more.
How does it mix with whiskey?
So inside our cell membranes, we have these water molecules that have six different positions at once? Is that what these people are saying.
These water molecules are busy, busy, busy!
Ice nine. We're doomed.
wow, two Kurt Vonnegut references in 24 hours...(8^D)
Very interesting. I was a ‘fresh out of college’ engineer in the ‘70s, and don’t recall hearing about poly water. The story reminds me a lot of the ‘global warming’ hype. Maybe that, too, will be a Wikipedia footnote in another half century.
I have read that fire is a form of plasma.
That is funny!
It’s all water under the bridge.
Or over the bridge.
Or through the bridge.
Interesting
No, I wasn’t even born in 1963... maybe it was a past life :)
I wasn’t really quoting anyone, just that stuff in quotes summarizes the “standard” interpretation of the old double slit experiment. There have been refinements on that experiment in the last few years that call that interpretation into serious question though.
Well, there are only a very few ways we know to produce light (photons). One of them is black body radiation, which is how incandescent light bulbs work. However, there is no filament or other similar body in the tube of a fluorescent bulb, so that method is ruled out. Another is combustion, but nothing in the fluorescent tube is burning, so that method is ruled out. Radioactive decay can also produce photons, but there is no significant amount of radioactive isotopes in a fluorescent bulb, so again, that is ruled out. Another method is stimulated emission, but that would require an already existing source of photons, which the fluorescent bulb lacks, so that must also be ruled out.
Which leaves (as far as I can think), only the method of plasma induced into the “glow discharge” state. All of the elements required for that ARE present in the fluorescent bulb, so it seems to me to be the only possible explanation for those bulbs which can’t be excluded.
I think it requires extremely low temperatures and not just a tight confinement of the water molecules, so this probably rarely occurs in nature.
You’re making sense. I may be on the way to a conversion.
Thanks, your explanation makes sense.
Really, considering the evidence, there is no reason to doubt that plasma exists. You might not agree that it qualifies as a “fourth state of matter”, but it certainly exists.
It is the scientifically accepted explanation.
Have you heard of a plasma torch? They also exist.
Long John Nebel. I had never heard of him. From his wikipedia page he sounds very interesting.
George Noory really does not float my boat.
He was late night radio in the early 60’s. I didn’t get to listen very often, but he was always there, especially with his UFO guests and assorted nuts.
So.... if you curl up into a fetal ball inside your sleeping bag while out camping in winter, are you doing so because you are thinking, or just simply responding to the environmental conditions ?
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