Following on from last week's discovery of water that can freeze at room temperature, here's another trick. Water at minus 130 degrees Celsius can flow like a thick fluid. The work carried out by Ove Andersson, a physicist at Umeå University, showed that by increasing pressure to 10,000 times the norm, ice could be coaxed into a viscous liquid state 30% denser than normal water. The findings lend support to the theory that water has two liquid phases, one at much higher density than the other. I'd imagine it also means liquid water is likely to exist even on frozen planets.
As someone said last week: water is weird.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
High-temperature superconductors (HTS), capable of storing and transmitting electricity with perfect efficiency, are a theoretical stumbling block. The mechanism underlying HTS behavior is a mystery, and the subject of significant contention and investigation among scientists. This puzzle, unlike…
I had not thought that water was a poorly understood substance. Here are two interesting water articles that show that there is still more to learn. Who knew.
First, if you put water in a high DC current it can form a bridge between two beakers:
When exposed to a high-voltage electric field,…
Some months ago I made a (seemingly idle) threat to follow up my basic concepts posts on polar and non-polar molecules and intermolecular forces with a post on phase changes. Finally it's here!
Since the discussion here will be leaning on a number of the concepts discusses in the earlier posts,…
"If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone." -Jack Handey
Take a look at our home planet, Earth, and one of the things you'll notice is that over 70% of the surface is coated in water.
Image credit: NASA / Apollo 17.
We all know why this is, of…
Very, very cool
I've got a friend who works on this sort of thing. Here's his latest paper.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp110372t
Could this be of use in freezing organs or would such high pressure necessarily damage living cells?
@ Zero
You mean for organ transplant? I don't think so; as far as I know organs are never frozen, simply kept cold.
Some animals that live in cold environments have blood that stays liquid at sub-zero temperatures, but this is done using natural antifreeze proteins.
Water is an amazing element but -130 degrees is not a natural temperature on the planet, neither is a pressure of 10k atmospheres. Not quite sure of the benefits for this planet but the right conditions could exist on other planets, the mind boggles. What could exist without it?
This is obviously not a condition that would naturally occur but thew ramifications are for the development of materials, liquids etc that would also not occur naturally. The same can be said for research into material development in zero G where liquids do not act in the same way as they do in a 1G environment (mixing oil and water for example...)