MIT Freezes Water At Boiling Point
Forget everything you thought you knew about boiling and freezing, thanks to these MIT scientists.
05 December, 2016
This photo shows a glaciologist removing a core of ice to study the chemical make-up of its body dating back to 1840, in Law Dome Camp, Antartica, 1993. The 2016 MIT study in question happened at a nano-scale – so it'll be a while (or never) before they c
<p dir="ltr"><span>Quick, what temperature does water boil or freeze at? You probably know this like the back of your hand, 100 and 0 degrees Celsius or 212 and 32 Fahrenheit. Well,</span><strong> now we can freeze water above the boiling point</strong><span>. If you feel like your head's about to explode with that image, don’t worry. We’ll explain.</span><span><br class="kix-line-break"></span><span><br class="kix-line-break"></span><span>It is known to anybody who is familiar with the laws of pressure, or who has tried to cook in the mountains, that the boiling and freezing points of water change when the water is exposed to differing pressures. Normally this effect is small, and only has causes differences of a few degrees. </span><a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/carbon-nanotubes-water-solid-boiling-1128" target="_blank"><span>Researchers at MIT</span></a><span> found that if water is placed inside a tiny enough space, a space only slightly larger than the water molecules themselves, then the freezing point can be raised to above its boiling point. This is done by means of carbon nanotubes, small straw-shaped structures that are the </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/nanotechnology-forever-on-the-horizon" target="_blank"><span>workhorse of nanotech. </span></a></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>The team of researchers published their findings in the journal </span><span>Nature Nanotechnology, and include </span><a href="https://srg.mit.edu/" target="_blank"><span>Michael Strano,</span></a><span> Kumar Agrawal, Steven Shimizu, Lee Drahushuk, and Daniel Kilcoyne among other partners and assistants. Dr. Strano is especially excited by the results, and remarks on how unexpected they are:</span><span><br class="kix-line-break"></span><span><br class="kix-line-break"></span><span>“</span><strong>The effect is much greater than anyone had anticipated,</strong><span>” he says. The effects were also in an unexpected direction; the researchers had anticipated that the freezing point would go down.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwOTA5NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNDc2OTI0Mn0.Jf7Dh8rDaQn7HSw1f7t6jPhXkNo00Oh3o_BTonTSZMo/img.jpg?width=980" id="6a8b6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="98ccb855be735fa1d46d1d9343346dc5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><br><em>Image courtesy of MIT.</em></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>But, what use could this possibly have, other than just being a curiosity? More than you might suppose. Because of the high freezing point, the technology could be used to make <strong>i</strong></span><strong>ce wires</strong><span>, taking advantage of the extremely high conductivity of water and the stability of the ice at room temperature. Dr. Strano mentioned that application specifically, “</span><strong>This gives us very stable water wires, at room temperature.</strong><span>” </span><span> Nanotechnology is a new field, with many possible applications, ranging from </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/ibm-nanotech-computer-chips-soon-after-2020" target="_blank"><span>computers</span></a><span>, </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/creating-a-nicotine-vaccine-at-the-nano-level" target="_blank"><span>to medicine</span></a><span> </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/using-nanotechnology-to-fight-bacteria" target="_blank"><span>of</span></a><span> </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/injectable-nanotech-manages-diabetes-for-days-at-a-time" target="_blank"><span>all</span></a><span> </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/with-nanotechnology-in-a-capsule-scientists-create-hangover-vaccine" target="_blank"><span>kinds</span></a><span>, </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/nanotechnology-treatment-could-cure-all-teenage-acne" target="_blank"><span>and even to facial care</span></a><span>. </span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>There is still a great deal about this process that remains unknown. Chief among them is how the water even gets into the tubes; the researches set the water in place for this experiment, but carbon nanotubes are considered to be water repellent, and the entry of the water in the tubes is difficult to explain logistically. </span>Dr. Strano also notes that the word “<strong>ice</strong>” is too precise to use to describe the water in the tubes. While it is solid, it may not have the crystalline structure of ice at the molecular level.</p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>What brave new world do we live in, where water can freeze above 100 degrees? </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/india-is-a-rising-giant-in-the-world-of-nanotechnology" target="_blank"><span>One where nanotech is king?</span></a><span> </span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/has-nanotechnology-already-reached-its-limit" target="_blank"><span>Or is nanotech past its prime already?</span></a><span> This discovery is new, and further research is needed, but what is certain is that exciting developments await.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span> </span></p> <div class="video-full-card-placeholder" data-slug="ray-kurzweil-on-the-future-of-nanotechnology" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
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1 Number Will Soon Reveal If the Speed of Light Used to Be Faster
Scientists produce a value for the cosmic microwave background that will definitely prove or disprove that the speed of light used to be higher.
26 November, 2016
Big bang (FILTER FORGE)
<p class="p1">According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the speed of light in a vacuum and gravity are the same. This is nice and orthogonal, but if the universe began with a hot big bang <a href="https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html" target="_blank"><span class="s1">13.77 billion years ago</span></a> give or take .059 billion years, there’s a problem scientists have been struggling to explain. If light particles and gravity waves travel at the same speed, there simply hasn’t been enough time for the universe to become as evenly heated as it seems to be. Light — and thus, energy and heat — just doesn’t travel fast enough to have reached across its entire radius in roughly 14 billion years. The prevailing explanation is the “inflation theory” in which the universe at first expanded slowly enough for it to reach a uniform temperature, and then picked up speed to reach its current estimated radius of <a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-10-big-universe.html" target="_blank"><span class="s1">46 billion light years across</span></a>. However, many feel that inflation is an idea lacking in evidence or a logical mechanism. Another idea is that <a href="http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/101-the-universe/cosmology-and-the-big-bang/general-questions/571-did-the-speed-of-light-change-over-the-history-of-the-universe-intermediate" target="_blank"><span class="s1">the speed of light used to be faster</span></a>, and now a team of scientists have come up with something unique in this field: A way to definitively test a theory.</p> <p class="p1">The issue the ideas are attempting to address is called the “horizon problem.” If you could see to the farthest star (we <a href="https://youtu.be/bd0vuQ8ml4E" target="_blank"><span class="s1">can’t actually see nearly that far</span></a> with the naked eye) on your left, it would be 14 billion light years away, or 14 billion years in the past. At your far right would be another 14-billion-year-old star. Scientists would say that both stars are in “causal contact” with us because their light has reached us, and causal contact is something that’s required for energy/heat to be exchanged.</p> <p class="p1"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwOTAxMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzY4ODc2MH0.Vso5fmuueeq0YR15qlW-smyHp5ZH1NTn8mjDewHP5qU/img.jpg?width=980" id="0d4b2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="193987291a5a6de20081e320bcd0de05" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p> <p class="p2"><span style="color: #737d83; font-size: 13px;">Night sky (</span><a href="https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ryanhallock/" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="s3">RYAN HALLOCK</span></a><span style="color: #737d83; font-size: 13px;">)</span></p> <p class="p2">On the other hand, the distance between our far left and far right stars would be 28 billion light years, and that means two people standing on those stars wouldn’t be able to see each other yet because it would take 28 billion years for light to travel between them and the universe is only 14 billion years old. These stars are not in causal contact, and thus no energy/heat has yet had time to travel between them. So why does the spectral index, a reading of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — a snapshot of the oldest light in the universe — show the same temperature everywhere?</p> <p class="p1"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwOTAxMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NjI0MDM0M30.flQ1NIle7GQzH9kiTJtUzKvtEFXSlfrVrJTmmrYOnq0/img.jpg?width=980" id="3ede4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0325d7aa492b0234cdd2c02931bb3886" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p> <div class="image-caption">CMB image from 2010 (<a href="http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/121238/ilc_9yr_moll4096.png"><span class="s1">NASA/WMAP</span></a>)</div> <div class="image-caption"></div> <p class="p1">One of the people who first put forward the idea that the speed of light might have been faster at some point and thus able to overtake the outward expansion of matter was <a href="http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.magueijo" target="_blank"><span class="s1">João Magueijo</span></a> from Imperial College London. He’s now developed, along with <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/people/niayesh-afshordi" target="_blank"><span class="s1">Niayesh Afshordi</span></a> at the Perimeter Institute in Canada, a <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.101301" target="_blank"><span class="s1">model that predicts a very specific spectral index value</span></a> that would confirm the speed of light used to be higher: 0.96478. Current readings of the CMB are not that far off — 0.968 — and they’re getting more precise all the time. It’s Magueijo’s hope that in the near future, the <a href="http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/planck-upholds-standard-cosmology-0210201523/" target="_blank"><span class="s1">Planck satellite measuring the CMB</span></a> will either match the model’s prediction, proving the theory, or definitively contradict it, thus ruling it out.</p> <p class="p1"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwOTAxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NjQ2MTY1Nn0.L5UswfczSdATncVeqkZ8485dcu0MpSg67Uotcar31CE/img.jpg?width=980" id="86249" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eab398eb0409a4aba16c7a8bc34edd9b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p> <div class="image-caption">Planck satellite (<a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16881"><span class="s1">JPL/NASA</span></a>)</div> <div class="image-caption"></div> <p class="p1">Magueijo tells <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2113797-gravity-may-have-chased-light-in-the-early-universe/" target="_blank"><span class="s1"><em>New Scientist</em></span></a>, “That would be great — I won’t have to think about these theories again. This whole class of theories in which the speed of light varies with respect to the speed of gravity will be ruled out."</p> <p class="p1">You might expect Magueijo to be pulling for his theory to be confirmed, but really, he’s just hoping for one irrefutable answer in a field that’s made up almost entirely of so-far unprovable theories. Which is to say, he’s just looking for some plain-old truth.</p>
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