Posted on 08/29/2021 8:40:58 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Water is the most abundant yet least understood liquid in nature. It exhibits many strange behaviors that scientists still struggle to explain. While most liquids get denser as they get colder, water is most dense at 39 degrees Fahrenheit, just above its freezing point. This is why ice floats to the top of a drinking glass and lakes freeze from the surface down, allowing marine life to survive cold winters. Water also has an unusually high surface tension, allowing insects to walk on its surface, and a large capacity to store heat, keeping ocean temperatures stable.
Now, a team that includes researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and Stockholm University in Sweden have made the first direct observation of how hydrogen atoms in water molecules tug and push neighboring water molecules when they are excited with laser light. Their results, published in Nature today, reveal effects that could underpin key aspects of the microscopic origin of water's strange properties and could lead to a better understanding of how water helps proteins function in living organisms...
Each water molecule contains one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, and a web of hydrogen bonds between positively charged hydrogen atoms in one molecule and negatively charged oxygen atoms in neighboring molecules holds them all together. This intricate network is the driving force behind many of water's inexplicable properties, but until recently, researchers were unable to directly observe how a water molecule interacts with its neighbors...
The research team created 100-nanometer-thick jets of liquid water—about 1,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair—and set the water molecules vibrating with infrared laser light. Then they blasted the molecules with short pulses of high-energy electrons from MeV-UED.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Researchers have made the first direct observation of atomic motion in liquid water molecules that have been excited with laser light. Their results reveal effects that could underpin the microscopic origin of water’s strange properties.Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
It also acts as a global heatsink that evens out climate variability.
Reminds me of when a conference of environmental activists a few years ago passed a resolution calling for a ban on the powerful industrial solvent Dihydrogen monoxide. And their type has the gall to try and educate us about “the science”.
I feel like drinking a large glass of ice cold quantum tugs.
You know how many people are killed by that stuff?
Reminds of a guy, in Germany I think, that studied the properties of water in nature. Primarily it’s various vortices and such. Came up with some very interesting devices. Can’t recall his name.
“I feel like drinking a large glass of ice cold quantum tugs”.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a2/c7/ba/a2c7bad51bf0fb1ccdcada8916d08774.gif
It is caused by hydrogen bonding and has been studied for years. I studied this a little in Chemistry graduate work in the 70’s.
A rub and a tug.
[singing] Splish, splash...
There's the required tie in. Most research these days has to either be connected to global warming or quantum computing.
CO2, the carbon source of all life on Earth, is 125 more concentrated in water than in air, so for net zero carbon schemes, the place to extract it is where most of the work has already been done. Trying to extract it from the air is nuts.
Big deal....A couple of water molecules fell in love...
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