Some Remarkable Properties of Metallic Hydrogen•Recombination of hydrogen atoms releases 216 MJ/kg•Hydrogen/Oxygen combustion in the Shuttle: 10 MJ/kg•TNT 4.2 MJ/kg•Theoretical Specific Impulse, Isp•Metallic Hydrogen 1000-1700s•Molecular hydrogen/oxygen ~460 s (space shuttle)•Metallic density about 12-13 [Personal Edit ( is actually) ] 15 fold of liquid molecular hydrogen [lab results of actual metallic hydrogen was 15 times denser]•Sufficient thrust for single-stage to orbit; explore outer planets
IF "big if" everything turned out fine, the 6K combustion temps (if you don't dilute it) would be the next issue for turning it into a rocket fuel. Is there any material that can withstand that temp? I can't think of any currently.
my guess is at that temp it would be a plasma. i think it would have to be. its the bit in between that worries me.
Looking through some of the previous attempts to produce metallic hydrogen, it seems like there was some talk that it might not even be a solid at all but some new fluid-like phase of matter. Is the mH Harvard claims to have produced a solid / solid-like? Can't find it. In one of Dr. Silvera's powerpoint presentations he makes reference both to a theorized liquid metallic and a solid metallic phase. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/637123main_Silvera_Presentation.pdf
Cheers, yeah I saw the phase diagram and was looking at it... only it's been a long time since 10th grade chem. It seemed that should be a lot less difficult to produce than solid, so if we were hearing about producing metallic hydrogen it'd've been the easier one first. But after looking through the paper again and seeing those few references to lmH, it seems it's already been synthesized? Is it just an experimental curiosity then without applications?
My question is: how much does it cost to make enough metallic hydrogen for a SSTO launch with 25 tonnes of payload? If it costs too much, then there is little point to it unless there is a path towards bringing costs down.
Are there any other interesting theoretical fuels out there which might be synthesized and haven't been yet?
By the way why is it appearing on a site like this first rather than a more mainstream science site?
Quote from: Elmar Moelzer on 11/06/2016 06:39 pmMy question is: how much does it cost to make enough metallic hydrogen for a SSTO launch with 25 tonnes of payload? If it costs too much, then there is little point to it unless there is a path towards bringing costs down.Until last month the price per kg was infinity, now after producing however much they did it's probably down into the mere quadrillions- so one month from now it should be completely free. If it is a room temperature super conductor, they'll certainly be interested in producing as much of it as they can... who knows how easy or difficult it will be to produce it in 30, or 50, or 100 years, fingers crossed...Hadn't heard about metallic hydrogen as a potential chemical fuel before, but apparently it's been theorized for some time. Are there any other interesting theoretical fuels out there which might be synthesized and haven't been yet?
Quote from: Star One on 11/06/2016 06:12 pmBy the way why is it appearing on a site like this first rather than a more mainstream science site?It kind of was here back in August: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/pressure-make-metallic-hydrogen
What is the reason for the high isp of metallic hydrogen?
How much of a case has been made that metallic hydrogen will be metastable and up to what pressure? I couldn't find any information on that but thought I had gathered from somewhere that metastability does not imply anything like ambient pressure or that it can be used to build structures, as I saw thrown around in a few article headings.What is claimed here is just that we have created some metallic hydrogen, right? What sort of confidence is there in it's properties?
Metallic hydrogen: The most powerful rocket fuel yet to exist.
Quote from: Sam Ho on 11/06/2016 09:30 pmMetallic hydrogen: The most powerful rocket fuel yet to exist.Bit of a hyperbole there, no ? Project Orion ? Also, NERVA certainly existed and could probably exceed this purely theoretical ISP of a purely theoretically metastable material.
Quote from: Stormbringer on 11/06/2016 05:18 pmalso its not as simple as solid, liquid and condensed gas... the articles seem to say that the solid form has at least three probably different organizational forms.That's the most critical part for consideration of a solid plasma.In Frank Chen's unpublished continuation to his Plasma Physics book, (which I have a draft copy of), he discusses theoretical solid plasmas - the organization of the "material" will matter.(Around this time had a discussion/notes of a fusion "combustion chamber" based on a solid plasma, however was told that no one would ever build a large enough vehicle for its use, since the Saturn V was considered "uneconomic" due to size. )
also its not as simple as solid, liquid and condensed gas... the articles seem to say that the solid form has at least three probably different organizational forms.
The rocketry application was published in a 2009 conference paper, so it isn't all that new, but back then there were no samples of metallic hydrogen.Silvera, Isaac F. and John W. Cole. 2010. Metallic hydrogen: The most powerful rocket fuel yet to exist. In International Conference on High Pressure Science and Technology, Joint AIRAPT-22 & HPCJ-50 : [proceedings] : 26-31 July 2009, Tokyo, Japan. Journal of Physics Conference Series 215(1): 012194.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9569212
Bit of a hyperbole there, no ? Project Orion ?
Also, NERVA certainly existed and could probably exceed this purely theoretical ISP of a purely theoretically metastable material.
Quote from: allhumanbeings07 on 11/06/2016 06:59 pmQuote from: Elmar Moelzer on 11/06/2016 06:39 pmMy question is: how much does it cost to make enough metallic hydrogen for a SSTO launch with 25 tonnes of payload? If it costs too much, then there is little point to it unless there is a path towards bringing costs down.Until last month the price per kg was infinity, now after producing however much they did it's probably down into the mere quadrillions- so one month from now it should be completely free. If it is a room temperature super conductor, they'll certainly be interested in producing as much of it as they can... who knows how easy or difficult it will be to produce it in 30, or 50, or 100 years, fingers crossed...Hadn't heard about metallic hydrogen as a potential chemical fuel before, but apparently it's been theorized for some time. Are there any other interesting theoretical fuels out there which might be synthesized and haven't been yet?yeah. go to project rho and look at their engine table. several of the fuels listed there are pretty much what you are asking about. E.G; metastable helium.http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#metaheliumhestarif 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. so if you could find either monopoles or some other suitable nucleon and electron substitute you could vastly out-perform even antimatter engines.we don't have monopoles but we have created synthetic atoms out of stuff that doesn't normally form atoms such as kaons and muons. they are very unstable and last a tiny amount of time before breaking up. but there is reason to hope that some combination or some amount of a material like this may be more persistent. Neutrons die in 11 or so minutes when alone but are stable possibly forever in an atomic nucleus. Likewise kaonium (or was it muonium?) lasts longer than individual particles of their species.
The 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.
EDIT: The short version of the above is that because there would presumably be much more mass and energy packed into a smaller space synthetic matter could provide more energy than antimatter even though all are constrained by the mass energy equivalence in the famous equation.
No, you cannot exceed e=mc^2. Any energy that you store in "chemical bonds" will simply show up as extra mass of the fuel. The energy per unit mass cannot surpass matter/antimatter.
Now, could we get some metallic oxygen, too? Breaking an O=O bond takes 498 kJ/mol, and we need half a mole per mole of hydrogen, so that's a total energy release of about 971 kJ/mol. Or, going into totally wild speculation, is a hydrogen-oxygen alloy possible?
Quote from: Proponent on 11/08/2016 02:38 pmNow, could we get some metallic oxygen, too? Breaking an O=O bond takes 498 kJ/mol, and we need half a mole per mole of hydrogen, so that's a total energy release of about 971 kJ/mol. Or, going into totally wild speculation, is a hydrogen-oxygen alloy possible?By definition, no. Alloys exist as combinations of metals because of the properties of metals - which Oxygen most definitely is not . Hydrogen is an unusual case; it's on the far left side of the periodic table because it's expected to be a metal, were it not for the quantum mechanics involved in the element's simplicity.
Quote from: RotoSequence on 11/08/2016 03:09 pmQuote from: Proponent on 11/08/2016 02:38 pmNow, could we get some metallic oxygen, too? Breaking an O=O bond takes 498 kJ/mol, and we need half a mole per mole of hydrogen, so that's a total energy release of about 971 kJ/mol. Or, going into totally wild speculation, is a hydrogen-oxygen alloy possible?By definition, no. Alloys exist as combinations of metals because of the properties of metals - which Oxygen most definitely is not . Hydrogen is an unusual case; it's on the far left side of the periodic table because it's expected to be a metal, were it not for the quantum mechanics involved in the element's simplicity.Oxygen will convert to a metallic allotrope at about 132 GPa. Many non-metal atoms have a metallic allotrope at sufficient pressures.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxygen#Metallic_oxygenhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonmetal#AllotropesIt just means that when pressures are sufficient to pack the atoms so tightly together that the valence electrons begin to migrate freely through the substance then it will demonstrate metallic properties.As far as I know, most of these metallic allotropes are not meta-stable and probably not all that useful for spaceflight unless you have a way to sustain those pressures without using massive containing structures.
With metallic hydrogen, the atoms need be broken out of the metallic matrix, but that probably takes a lot less energy.
Quote from: Proponent on 11/08/2016 02:38 pmWith metallic hydrogen, the atoms need be broken out of the metallic matrix, but that probably takes a lot less energy. Once that happens, aren't the individual atoms going to want to immediately revert to the H-H configuration (covalent bond) with commensurate release of energy?
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.Alternatively wrap lithium deuteride in a metallic deuterium magnetic compression target.Also, superconducting rings of metallic hydrogen could be launched via a linear accelerator to be mass-beam pellets to push spacecraft. Ramming into a magnetic field around the vehicle at high speed would probably cause the superconductivity to quench, blasting the ring into high speed hydrogen plasma.
Quote from: qraal on 11/09/2016 10:29 amMetallic 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.Alternatively wrap lithium deuteride in a metallic deuterium magnetic compression target.Also, superconducting rings of metallic hydrogen could be launched via a linear accelerator to be mass-beam pellets to push spacecraft. Ramming into a magnetic field around the vehicle at high speed would probably cause the superconductivity to quench, blasting the ring into high speed hydrogen plasma.This post is the best piece of hard Sci-Fi I've read this year.
Quote from: DMeader on 11/09/2016 04:00 pmQuote from: Proponent on 11/08/2016 02:38 pmWith metallic hydrogen, the atoms need be broken out of the metallic matrix, but that probably takes a lot less energy. Once that happens, aren't the individual atoms going to want to immediately revert to the H-H configuration (covalent bond) with commensurate release of energy?No doubt, and, rereading the article and clicking through the links, the idea seems to be to rely on that energy alone, not bothering with the oxygen.An Isp of 1700 s corresponds to an effective exhaust velocity of about 17 km/s. For getting to LEO that's actually too high, if the objective is to minimize the amount of metallic hydrogen. It might be optimal to add a cheap working fluid, ideally a monatomic one. That would have the added advantage of keeping the temperature down.
Metallic deuterium would allow self-detonating fusion devices.
Quote from: qraal on 11/09/2016 10:29 amMetallic deuterium would allow self-detonating fusion devices. not sure that that is a good thing given human inhumanity to their fellow humans in large numbers, --despite the good non destructive (non-murdilating) uses such things would have.
AbstractProducing metallic hydrogen has been a great challenge to condensed matter physics. Metallic hydrogen may be a room temperature superconductor and metastable when the pressure is released and could have an important impact on energy and rocketry. We have studied solid molecular hydrogen under pressure at low temperatures. At a pressure of 495 GPa hydrogen becomes metallic with reflectivity as high as 0.91. We fit the reflectance using a Drude free electron model to determine the plasma frequency of 32.5 ± 2.1 eV at T = 5.5 K, with a corresponding electron carrier density of 7.7 ± 1.1 × 1023 particles/cm3, consistent with theoretical estimates of the atomic density. The properties are those of an atomic metal. We have produced the Wigner-Huntington dissociative transition to atomic metallic hydrogen in the laboratory.
In 1935 a pair of physicists predicted that if the pressure of hydrogen were raised to about 25 times that of atmospheric pressure, it would turn into a solid metal. Experimentalists ever since have tried and failed to spot this transition, even after raising the pressure of hydrogen to millions of times atmospheric pressure. Now, the transition to solid metallic hydrogen may have been reached. Physicists in the United States say that by crushing a tiny amount of hydrogen between the tips of two flat-tipped diamonds at cryogenic temperatures they've raised the pressure to nearly 5 million times atmospheric pressure, causing the hydrogen to reflect light like a metal. They still don't have evidence the pressurized hydrogen is a solid. But even the claim that it is metallic is highly controversial. Other high-pressure physicists question some of the procedures used in the new study, and say they need more proof before they'll concede that the 80-year quest is over.
And because the research was published in Science, Nature tries to spoil the party: http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-doubt-bold-report-of-metallic-hydrogen-1.21379
An update including a picture of the sample they have produced.http://www.sciencealert.com/hydrogen-has-been-turned-into-a-metal-for-the-first-time-everAnd here's the paper published in Science.QuoteAbstractProducing metallic hydrogen has been a great challenge to condensed matter physics. Metallic hydrogen may be a room temperature superconductor and metastable when the pressure is released and could have an important impact on energy and rocketry. We have studied solid molecular hydrogen under pressure at low temperatures. At a pressure of 495 GPa hydrogen becomes metallic with reflectivity as high as 0.91. We fit the reflectance using a Drude free electron model to determine the plasma frequency of 32.5 ± 2.1 eV at T = 5.5 K, with a corresponding electron carrier density of 7.7 ± 1.1 × 1023 particles/cm3, consistent with theoretical estimates of the atomic density. The properties are those of an atomic metal. We have produced the Wigner-Huntington dissociative transition to atomic metallic hydrogen in the laboratory.http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/01/25/science.aal1579?More in this article.Metallic hydrogen created in diamond viseQuoteIn 1935 a pair of physicists predicted that if the pressure of hydrogen were raised to about 25 times that of atmospheric pressure, it would turn into a solid metal. Experimentalists ever since have tried and failed to spot this transition, even after raising the pressure of hydrogen to millions of times atmospheric pressure. Now, the transition to solid metallic hydrogen may have been reached. Physicists in the United States say that by crushing a tiny amount of hydrogen between the tips of two flat-tipped diamonds at cryogenic temperatures they've raised the pressure to nearly 5 million times atmospheric pressure, causing the hydrogen to reflect light like a metal. They still don't have evidence the pressurized hydrogen is a solid. But even the claim that it is metallic is highly controversial. Other high-pressure physicists question some of the procedures used in the new study, and say they need more proof before they'll concede that the 80-year quest is over.http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/332
The paper that this is all based on is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.01634
Quote from: Nilof on 01/27/2017 08:44 amThe paper that this is all based on is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.01634That is not the peer reviewed paper you can tell from the date.
It was also hardly easy to manufacture considering the amount of preparation they had to make with the synthetic diamond vice alone. That pressure is ridiculous as well and how much energy did that use to create. Going to be as much about how you manufacture it as to if it's metastable.
Quote from: Proponent on 11/09/2016 05:23 pmQuote from: DMeader on 11/09/2016 04:00 pmQuote from: Proponent on 11/08/2016 02:38 pmWith metallic hydrogen, the atoms need be broken out of the metallic matrix, but that probably takes a lot less energy. Once that happens, aren't the individual atoms going to want to immediately revert to the H-H configuration (covalent bond) with commensurate release of energy?No doubt, and, rereading the article and clicking through the links, the idea seems to be to rely on that energy alone, not bothering with the oxygen.An Isp of 1700 s corresponds to an effective exhaust velocity of about 17 km/s. For getting to LEO that's actually too high, if the objective is to minimize the amount of metallic hydrogen. It might be optimal to add a cheap working fluid, ideally a monatomic one. That would have the added advantage of keeping the temperature down.The paper said that a monopropellant would have an Isp of 1700s and a temperature of around 7000K. Hydrogen diluent to take the temperature down to 3500K-3800K would result in an Isp of 1030-1120s, and water diluent would have an Isp of 460-540s.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9569212
...and it's gonehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/metallic-hydrogen-disappears-technology-revolutions-superconductor-faster-computers-super-efficient-a7593481.html
This is good news, now they are forced to reproduce it earlier than expected.
Quote from: IRobot on 02/24/2017 09:54 amThis is good news, now they are forced to reproduce it earlier than expected.On the other hand, the fact that it immediately disappeared after the failure of the diamond, and the fact that the diamond was destroyed so completely, and in a fashion that had never been seen before (indicating massive force) makes me suspect that metallic hydrogen (assuming that sample really was metallic hydrogen) is probably not metastable. Which would mean no new wonder rocket fuel (or super-explosive, or superconductor or all the other fantastic stuff some people were already expecting...). Which is kind of a bummer...
As the article I linked to points out this is an assumption that cannot be made at this time.
Quote from: IRobot on 02/24/2017 09:54 amThis is good news, now they are forced to reproduce it earlier than expected.On the other hand, the fact that it immediately disappeared after the failure of the diamond, and the fact that the diamond was destroyed so completely, and in a fashion that had never been seen before (indicating massive force) makes me suspect that metallic hydrogen (assuming that sample really was metallic hydrogen) is probably not metastable.
Am I reading this right? They only did this once? What the hell were they doing announcing it if they've only done it once? What happened to reproducibility?
Even if the stuff is real and metastable it is mostly only of theoretical value. It would probably cost billions to produce a gram of the stuff. Rocket fuel? Not likely.
How many specially polished and prepared diamonds will you need to use to produce a gram?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Quote from: Stormbringer on 11/06/2016 07:58 pmif 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.
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.
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.
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.L022023If 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.