Author Topic: Metallic Hydrogen is real!  (Read 37766 times)

Offline IRobot

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #80 on: 02/27/2017 09:33 am »
You don't need to combine it into a larger object, actually for it to be used as a fuel, you need to keep it to very tiny pellets.

And why do you assume that diamonds will explode every time?

Offline R7

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #81 on: 02/27/2017 11:16 am »
How many specially polished and prepared diamonds will you need to use to produce a gram?

Good question, and depends on how fast you need that gram. I estimated the broken sample weight at about 80 picograms, assuming 0.7g/cm3 density for the metallic hydrogen.

IF the process could be as simple as 1. place droplet of LH2 at the anvil, 2. compress and 3. remove a spec of metallic hydrogen then it still remains that you need either very fast process rate or vast array of said anvils, most likely both, to produce at any meaningful rate.

Anyone know what's the 'efficiency' of the compressing ie. what's the ratio of energy content of produced metallic hydrogen vs energy required to produce it. Is there some exact known upper physical limit?
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Offline R7

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #82 on: 02/27/2017 11:25 am »
You don't need to combine it into a larger object, actually for it to be used as a fuel, you need to keep it to very tiny pellets.

I agree. Nanoparticles suspended in liquid, maybe LH2.

I don't know the exact physics of the energy release here but gut feeling says it resembles a detonation, except at 'nuclear' speed. Therefore hard to see any hope of large solid pieces of metallic hydrogen acting like solid motor grain or anything in that fashion. Resident physicists, please confirm or correct.
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Offline Proponent

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #83 on: 02/27/2017 12:51 pm »
That seems reasonable, but I don't think we're still talking about molecular energies, albeit on the high end, rather than nuclear.
« Last Edit: 02/27/2017 01:35 pm by Proponent »

Offline gospacex

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #84 on: 02/27/2017 01:11 pm »
if you could make atoms out of unusual particles like magnetic monopoles the energy released by breaking their *chemical* bonds could release more energy that antimatter or certainly atomic reactions. this is because the energy is inversely proportional to the length of the bonds whether electronic bonds or nuclear bonds. the bonds of magnetic monopole matter would be 2000 time shorter than those in regular matter and antimatter. and breaking a magnetic monopole atoms nucleus apart or fusing them would make more energy still than breaking electronic bonds.

There is a very common mistake in the above description. "Breaking of bonds" of any bound system never releases any energy: it absorbs it. By definition, a "bound" system is one which has less energy than its constituent parts separated. Unbinding bound system takes energy.

The reactions which release energy either create bound system from parts (e.g. H->He fusion) or rearrange initial bound system(s) into final, more tightly bound system(s). Examples: H2+O2 -> H2O burning; U235+n -> Kr89+Ba144+2n fission.

Offline ppnl

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #85 on: 02/27/2017 06:22 pm »
You don't need to combine it into a larger object, actually for it to be used as a fuel, you need to keep it to very tiny pellets.

And why do you assume that diamonds will explode every time?

No but to use it as anything other than rocket fuel you will need to combine it.

And I'm not assuming that the diamond will explode every time. But you will be using so many of them that even a small failure rate will make De Beers very happy.

Offline IRobot

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #86 on: 02/27/2017 07:03 pm »
They are artificial diamonds, not natural:

Quote
But rather than natural diamond, Silvera and Dias used two small pieces of carefully polished synthetic diamond and treated them to make them even tougher.

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

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #87 on: 02/27/2017 09:38 pm »
if you could make atoms out of unusual particles like magnetic monopoles the energy released by breaking their *chemical* bonds could release more energy that antimatter or certainly atomic reactions. this is because the energy is inversely proportional to the length of the bonds whether electronic bonds or nuclear bonds. the bonds of magnetic monopole matter would be 2000 time shorter than those in regular matter and antimatter. and breaking a magnetic monopole atoms nucleus apart or fusing them would make more energy still than breaking electronic bonds.

There is a very common mistake in the above description. "Breaking of bonds" of any bound system never releases any energy: it absorbs it. By definition, a "bound" system is one which has less energy than its constituent parts separated. Unbinding bound system takes energy.

The reactions which release energy either create bound system from parts (e.g. H->He fusion) or rearrange initial bound system(s) into final, more tightly bound system(s). Examples: H2+O2 -> H2O burning; U235+n -> Kr89+Ba144+2n fission.
and yet exothermal chemical reactions release energy. what i was getting at there is that chemical reactions for matter with smaller bond lengths whether chemical or nuclear would release more energy because the energy in a bond is inversely proportional to the bond length scaling.

you took it from the other end of the scenario that it does take energy to break a bond in the case monopole atoms the energy of first ionization is calculated to be roughly that of an extreme high energy gamma ray or perhaps more.


But i was talking about the electronic bond and assume that the monopole matter can form analogous to normal matter and have both nucleonss and electron substitute particles ammenable to forming atoms and forming diverse elements and compounds. ( neverminding  the question of whether monopoles exist at all :)    )


From Orion's arm; a shared scifi universe that has a lot of hard sci mixed with some more fantastic elements. The bit that is hard sci/fi usually is often built on peer reviewed science article cites. Before their last site rebuild the cites for Monopole science was pretty good with 6 cites of peer reviewed papers. after the rebuild i cannot find the cite footnotes butthey may still bethere somewhere.


Quote
he smallest magatoms have diameters of 3E-19 m, 300 million times smaller than an atom of conventional matter. As a typical magatom is 10,000 times heavier than a typical conventional atom, magmatter's typical density is 1E33 kg/m3. Since force is energy per unit distance, the force needed to break a magchemical bond is larger than that needed to break an electronic chemical bond by a factor of the energy scaling (300 GeV / 13.7 eV) divided by the length scaling, or 7 million trillion (7E18). The strength of a material is usually defined as the force per unit area required to make the material fail. Since each magchemical bond can withstand 7E18 times greater force, and there are (300 million)2 times more bonds per unit area, the strength of magmatter is about 8E35 times greater than that of its normal matter equivalent.
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Offline Billium

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #88 on: 09/13/2020 05:54 pm »
There is new work out metallic hydrogen from a French group who may have created it. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00149-7

I was tipped off from a video in the Subject Zero Science YouTube channel.


Offline edzieba

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #89 on: 09/14/2020 05:57 pm »
Source paper appears to be here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1927-3
I may be misunderstanding, but Fig 2c does indiacte against metastabiltiy, at least under their test conditions: the rapid change in absorption characteristics reverses as pressure is released in a near-identical manner to pressure being applied.

Metallic deuterium would allow self-detonating fusion devices. Friedwardt Winterberg has a design for a non-fission triggered D-T device (it's in one of his papers on viXra, since the arXiv wouldn't allow it.) He used standard chemical explosives in a rather complicated process. Such explosives pack the equivalent of ~350 s Isp. An implosion device made of solid metallic deuterium wouldn't need high explosives, since it would pack ~x10 the energy or so. And it'd be fusion fuel. Just squirt some tritium into the very centre.
If metastable metallic Deuterium is created, and it is not named 'Duodec', then somebody has dropped the ball!

Offline sanman

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #90 on: 09/18/2020 06:24 am »
There would be huge entropy pressure against such a material, though. There are no examples of this kind of degenerate matter in nature.

Offline Vahe231991

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #91 on: 07/28/2023 03:13 am »
I found a recent paper suggesting that metallic hydrogen has probably been made from plastics:
https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L022023

If the conclusion of this paper is taken seriously by rocket scientists, it would add ammunition to the case for metastable metallic hydrogen being a highly efficient rocket propellant because metastable metallic hydrogen has a theoretical specific impulse of up to 1700 seconds. A best bet would be for hundreds of thousands of tons of disposed plastic material to be used for the production of metallic hydrogen rocket fuel.
« Last Edit: 07/28/2023 02:24 pm by Vahe231991 »

Offline redneck

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #92 on: 07/28/2023 09:13 am »
Interesting paper. Read the PDF. Even diluted to keep chamber temps in line, it would change space transportation dynamics. Even a Mars return could be affected by using the metallic hydrogen to heat in situ obtained CO2 or whatever is easiest to obtain. 

Edit.  All depends on costs and difficulty in real use.   
« Last Edit: 07/28/2023 09:38 am by redneck »

Offline edzieba

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Re: Metallic Hydrogen is real!
« Reply #93 on: 07/28/2023 10:10 am »
I found a recent paper suggesting that metallic hydrogen has probably been made from plastics:
https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L022023

If the conclusion of this paper is taken seriously by rocket scientists, it would add ammunition to the case for metastable metallic hydrogen being a highly efficient rocket propellant because metastable metallic hydrogen has a theoretical specific impulse of up to 1700 seconds. A best bet would be for hundred of thousands of tons disposed plastic materials to be used for the production of metallic hydrogen rocket fuel.
Note that the paper is not positing the creation of metastable metallic Hydrogen, the metallic Hydrogen exists transiently in the region immediately behind the shockwave passing through the polymer sample.

 

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