Metal Hydrogen and its future potential

[The Almighty 2]

Recently students and teachers from Harvard University has successfully created Metal Hydrogen which they claim had never existed before. What are its likely applications and potential?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qitm5fteL0

[louis wu 23]

A BBC news article on the discovery is here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38768683

 

The paper is here

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1610/1610.01634.pdf

 

As described in the paper, the work should be easy to replicate and confirm. If the metallic hydrogen is metastable. and can be a RT superconductor that would be wonderful for many applications. There would be obvious difficulties in mass production of metallic hydrogen.

That weird phase diagram (fig. 1) does imply the possibility of RT stability..

[DrKrettin 222]

I read the paper (superficially). Why was this not achieved ages ago? I could not see what they did which was novel and the reason that it had not been done before.

[louis wu 23]

I read the paper (superficially). Why was this not achieved ages ago? I could not see what they did which was novel and the reason that it had not been done before.

Why was it not achieved years ago? i think that is kind of unfair.

 

The fig.1 phase diagram is the result of ongoing research by several competing teams.

The production of metallic hydrogen is novel as far as I can tell, and may be a great leap forwards.

 

Before this last weekend I had assumed that metallic hydrogen would be confined to the centre of gas giant planets, if found anywhere.

[DrKrettin 222]

Why was it not achieved years ago? i think that is kind of unfair.

 

The fig.1 phase diagram is the result of ongoing research by several competing teams.

The production of metallic hydrogen is novel as far as I can tell, and may be a great leap forwards.

 

Before this last weekend I had assumed that metallic hydrogen would be confined to the centre of gas giant planets, if found anywhere.

 

I find your comment totally mysterious. I asked a purely objective question as to why nobody managed to produce this before now. What challenges did they overcome where others had failed? How could that be seen as unfair? Unfair to whom?

[Outrider 47]

Hi DrKrettin

Your comments are unfair because they imply that the experiment was easy to do. Per the linked article the hydrogen was subjected to 5 million earth atmospheres and minus 270c temperatures. I think the onus is on you to show us why it was easy and should have been accomplished "ages" ago.

 

OTOH the article also quotes several scientists questioning the validity of the experiment so don't get to excited just yet. As Luis already pointed out i am sure an attempt to replicate is already in the works. If confirmed this will be exciting news indeed.

[DrKrettin 222]

Hi DrKrettin

Your comments are unfair because they imply that the experiment was easy to do. Per the linked article the hydrogen was subjected to 5 million earth atmospheres and minus 270c temperatures. I think the onus is on you to show us why it was easy and should have been accomplished "ages" ago.

 

-that is a complete misinterpretation of my post - I did not intend to imply any such thing. Given that solid hydrogen was predicted 80 years ago, I was curious to know what problems were involved for it to take 80 years to confirm. Nowhere do I suggest or even imply it was easy and that it should have been done earlier. I find this reaction rather odd.

[Endy0816 451]

I think he was referring to the relative commoness of diamond anvil cells today.

 

Reading the Harvard Gazette article, they mention requiring specially prepared synthetic diamonds to achieve metallic hydrogen, without the Anvil itself breaking.

 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/01/a-breakthrough-in-high-pressure-physics/

Edited January 30, 2017 by Endy0816

[sunshaker 28]

I read the paper (superficially). Why was this not achieved ages ago? I could not see what they did which was novel and the reason that it had not been done before.

I was also wondering the same.

 

This Metallic Hydrogen, was produced with an Diamond Anvil cell, using 495 gigapascals of pressure,

These anvils can and were producing 640 GPa of pressure in 2012,

 

Plus shock wave techniques can produce 100,000 GPa of pressure,

 

I do not know if the shock wave technique would work on Liquid Hydrogen, Or whether it would have to be a sustained pressure? But I would have thought, if it needed to be a sustained pressure, we could never then create and use metallic Hydrogen.

 

I also wonder, but cannot find any information, Would a magnetic field, have any effect on the pressure needed, As a magnetic field can effect an electrons orbital?