Posted on 02/26/2017 8:33:17 PM PST by BenLurkin
Harvard scientists triumphantly announced that they'd created metallic hydrogen last month, but now it's suddenly gone.
Scientists hailed it as the holy grail of high pressure physics when they finally produced it in the lab: metallic hydrogen, a century after it was first theorized to exist. And now that sample, which had been held in a hyper refrigerated laboratory, has vanished into thin air, and scientists cant figure out why.
Reports indicate that the metallic hydrogen had been kept between a vice of two diamonds at huge pressures while being stored at 80 Kelvin, but something happened in the lab and the diamonds broke. Now, the metallic hydrogen, which was 10 micrometers in diameter, has disappeared. Its possible that its simply right under their noses, but theres also a possibility that it has turned back into a gas.
(Excerpt) Read more at morningticker.com ...
Potentially most powerful chemical explosive at 216 MJ / kg.
lol...
For some reason party balloons are almost always filled with helium, not hydrogen. This despite helium's higher cost, scarcity on earth, slightly lower lift, lesser opportunity for amusement, and a permeation rate through balloon envelopes almost as bad as hydrogen's.
Of course, you can always make your own hydrogen balloons at home:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=755KpMw_Od8
As for permeation, molecule size is not the whole story. For instance, some scientists were able to make very thin membranes out of graphene oxide that "are completely impermeable to liquids, vapors and gases, but allow unimpeded permeation of water (H2O permeates through the membranes at least 1010 times faster than He)."
The metallic hydrogen sank to the center of the Earth.
“Lesser opportunity for amusement?” I think your average parent would rather have their kids speaking in higher voices than reenacting the Hindenberg disaster. Leave the semi-permeable membranes and pressure gradients to science class.
Thank you...
Grow up!
No
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