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Never-before-seen “black nitrogen” plugs puzzle in periodic table
- aaronlifshin 6y agoThe name reminds me of Big Bismuth!
- pansa2 6y agoTransparent Aluminum!
- JulianMorrison 6y ago'Tis but a flesh wound!
- klyrs 6y ago> To create the new form [nitrogen] was pressed together between two diamonds to 1.4 million atmospheres of pressure, and over 4,000 °C (7,232 °F)... It appears to have good conductivity, much like that of graphene, which could make it useful in future electronic devices. Are you kidding me? Kinda grasping at straws if that's the application -- who are we selling these electronics to, magma golems? This is good & pure science, please don't sully it with such foolishness.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoScience journalists are pretty much required to ask about useful applications. "It was cool and we wanted to do it" may be the truth, but (sadly) it's not an acceptable answer.
- cyclotron3k 6y agoTotally agree. Scientific breakthroughs shouldn't require commercial justification. That they are expanding the extent of human knowledge should be enough.
- nikanj 6y agoEveryone knows you can't report on science without promising cellphones that you only have to charge once per week.
- virgilp 6y agoSo, basically, Nokia 3310?
- laichzeit0 6y agoWhat's even more depressing is that most people on this forum will probably not get this reference :(
- londons_explore 6y agoIf it can be done with pressure alone, it isn't unreasonable to consider that a crystalline structure might be able to keep it in this state with no external forces.
- lain-dono 6y ago> magma golems I don't understand, why not? If they're magma, it doesn't mean they're not smart enough to use electronics.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoWhat are some other open mysteries in physics / chemistry / science? Anyone have some favorites? Bonus points for simplicity + obscurity. Everyone knows that dark matter is an open mystery, but I suspect not too many people knew about black nitrogen. EDIT: There are some nice lists on Wikipedia that are fun to dig through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems Is Feynmanium the last chemical element that can physically exist? That is, what are the chemical consequences of having an element with an atomic number above 137, whose 1s electrons must travel faster than the speed of light? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_periodic_table#Elements_above_the_atomic_number_137 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_periodic_table#Elemen...
- mkaic 6y agoThose links are excellent reading, thank you for posting them here!
- macintux 6y agoNice find. The Axis of Evil is particularly interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology)
- mardifoufs 6y agoWoah, what a rabbit hole that wiki article got me into. Btw, what could be the possible explanation for that "axis of evil" if we assume it's not just a series of faulty observations?
- rpastuszak 6y agoHa, I'll leave this for a Saturday morning coffee + wikipedia binge then. Haven't done this for ages!
- adam_cadien 6y agoHow do glasses form? What order parameter determines the properties of liquids? Are there an unifying properties determining the structure of atomic liquids? What determines the network properties of liquids? Here's a more tangible one; Is solid hydrogen stable? I did my PhD in this area and even discovered liquid polymorphism in atomic Cerium. There are tons of unanswered questions like this! It's bonkers how many things we know we don't know, just think of the things we don't know we don't know :p
- h2odragon 6y ago> the team exposed nitrogen to extreme heat and pressure. It was pressed together between two diamonds to 1.4 million atmospheres of pressure, and over 4,000 °C (7,232 °F). > The temperature at the inner core's surface is estimated to be approximately 5700 K (5430 °C or 9806 °F) ... The pressure in the Earth's inner core is slightly higher than it is at the boundary between the outer and inner cores: it ranges from about 330 to 360 gigapascals (3,300,000 to 3,600,000 atm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_inner_core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_inner_core There's probably even weirder states of nitrogen and other elements not that far away from us. Whole chemistries and semiconductor-ish effects we're guessing at. Fun!
- noir_lord 6y agoThis is why I love science, any field where “what happens if we squish it really really hard and then superheat it?” is answered by “let’s find out” is one that has my admiration. Scientists the world over have my respect for what they do.
- hpkuarg 6y ago"Science isn't about why, it's about why not!"
- partomniscient 6y agoIndeed. This is way past the 'what happens if you put it in the microwave?' level of scientific enquiry, but yet it also has the same kind of feel to it in some way.
- thelibrarian 6y agoBeing previously unfamiliar both with the black phosphorus allotrope, and with newatlas.com, I clicked on the link wondering if this would be the new “red mercury”. I was pleasantly surprised that it is much more interesting (and scientifically valid) than that.
- colanderman 6y agoDumb question, how does one convince nitrogen, a gas, to sit still between the heads of those two diamonds to be compressed?
- divbzero 6y agoThey employed either a very persuasive graduate student, or a chamber filled with pure nitrogen. From the experimental method section of the original paper: [1] “A BX90-type diamond anvil cell equipped with 80 μm diameter diamond anvil culets was prepared. A 200 μm thick rhenium foil was indented down to 12 μm and a sample cavity of 40 μm in diameter was laser-drilled at the center of the indentation. Two agglomerates of submicron-sized gold particles, each of approximately 2 μm in size, were loaded into the sample chamber to serve as both YAG laser absorbers and pressure gauges. The cell was then loaded with pure nitrogen gas at ~1200 bars.” [1]: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.216001 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...
- colanderman 6y agoAh thanks, if I'm understanding that correctly it sounds like the rhenium foil contained the nitrogen as it was being compressed. That makes sense.
- revicon 6y agoHere's what a BX90-type diamond anvil cell looks like... https://aip.scitation.org/action/showOpenGraphArticleImage?doi=10.1063/1.4768541&id=images/medium/1.4768541.figures.f1.gif https://aip.scitation.org/action/showOpenGraphArticleImage?d...
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> either a very persuasive graduate student LOL. This was smart and funny.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe significance of this article is that you don't need a big science lab like CERN to do useful experiments. Diamond anvil cells are under $10,000: https://diamondanvils.com/product-category/diamond-anvil-cells/optical/ https://diamondanvils.com/product-category/diamond-anvil-cel...
- airstrike 6y ago> you don't need a big science lab like CERN to do useful experiments Did anyone really ever claim that?
- Zensynthium 6y agoNo, but that's still pretty cool to hear (even though everything else to conduct the experiment was probably a bit pricier if not just as pricey)
- hobofan 6y agoAnd how cheaply can you create a environment of "1.4 million atmospheres of pressure, and over 4,000 °C"?
- londons_explore 6y agoA diamond anvil makes both of those on the tips of the diamond (briefly)
- B5C8ECB24DB47D1 6y agoDiamond anvil cells produce the pressure, however, here, the temperature is created by lasers. If you are careful enough (and reasonable enough), your diamond anvil cell can last forever, as long as you don't break the diamonds you can reuse the same cell for another sample or another run. The pressure usually requires a pressure driver to push the diamonds towards each other (some kind of very precise gas pump) which runs of of electricity. The temperature however evolves rapidly: the sample is heated via laser (usually pulsed to observe dynamics but can also be considered continuous, i.e. above millisecond time scale).
- moneytide1 6y agoMetallic hydrogen is thought to be possible using the diamond stamping method mentioned in the article.
- foobarbecue 6y agoYeah, they made a shiny thing one time... But it got away
- mturmon 6y agoMore on the metallic hydrogen investigations: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/metallic-hydrogen-lasers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/metallic-hydrogen... It appears that one can use lasers, diamond vises, and/or numerical simulation to get properties of metallic hydrogen.
- moneytide1 6y agoI have only read a few short articles about it, but after it is compressed to a certain point, can it remain in the metallic state after the vise/laser is removed?
- itsangaris 6y agoCan anyone more specifically comment on some of the potential applications for this newly discovered material?
- purplezooey 6y agoRoman candles
- duskwuff 6y agoNone, at least not directly. It's an allotrope which can only exist under extreme physical conditions. There are many such allotropes of well-known substances. For instance, solid water has over a dozen allotropes (including ice-IX, or "ice-nine", which will not turn you into a human popsicle). Most of the interesting allotropes of ice only form under pressures of >100 MPa, so they are never seen under terrestrial conditions. The same applies to most other allotropes, with a few notable exceptions in metals and metalloids (like tin and sulphur). It's unclear to me what the author of the article had in mind when they suggested the "potential" that "black nitrogen might have for electronics". Unless the author is imagining electronics which must be placed under immense pressure and heated to thousands of degrees to remain stable?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- air7 6y agoThere's always the possibility that a method will be found that will allow the material to maintain at least some of these properties after "returning" to normal temp/pressures conditions.
- duskwuff 6y agoThat seems unlikely for a compound which is stable as a gas at STP. You can sometimes stabilize an allotrope of a compound which would otherwise be stable as another allotrope, but there's no real way (that I'm aware of) to stave off a phase transition, especially one as energetic as solid/gas.
- elbear 6y agoI love the sense of humor found in the comments of this thread.
- hathym 6y ago> could one day be useful in advanced electronics We're still waiting for graphene.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoBlack nitrogen matter
- dredmorbius 6y agoSo, when someone mentions nitrogen, high temperatures, and high pressures, in the same sentence, what comes to my mind isn't electronics so much as explosives.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arrosenberg 6y agoPure nitrogen forms a dimer and is inert. The nitrogen that goes boom involves hydrogen and oxygen molecules.
- duskwuff 6y agoAnd "going boom" typically involves those nitrogen atoms setting off on their own to turn back into N2.
- dredmorbius 6y agoAllotropes aren't "pure" (STP) molecular N2. This allotrope seems to be the sort of thing that would be (or could be) formed in a sufficiently powerful, or engineered, explosion. How or to what ends ... I'm not sure.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoNot quite. Pure nitrogen forms an inert dimer with a very strong bond. The nitrogen that goes boom is the energy released by forming such a bond when you liberate nitrogen from complexes with other things than single nitrogen atoms. Like hydrogen and carbon and maybe oxygen. But this stuff in the article is pure nitrogen, and isn't a dimer, and certainly isn't inert (it decayed back to the dimer when pressure was released). It'd be a crappy explosive (needs to be kept in a diamond anvil cell...) but it would have released the energy used to form it. In theory there are other allotropes, like octaazacubane (N8) that might be more stable and would be frighteningly efficient explosives.
- joelthelion 6y agoDumb question: with all we know about theoretical quantum physics, couldn't we compute what happens in these extreme conditions? Or is it still computationally intractable? If so, why is that?
- GuB-42 6y agoI am not a quantum physicist by far, but my understanding is that solving the Schrodinger equation for anything more complex than hydrogen is more or less impossible. So instead we go the other way: use "close enough" experimental data and perturbation theory to approximate the results for more complex systems.
- Xcelerate 6y ago> solving the Schrodinger equation for anything more complex than hydrogen is more or less impossible. Solving in the sense of an analytic, closed form solution to the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation (itself an approximation to QFT) using commonly accepted elementary functions. Even this requires actually evaluating the elementary functions to some degree of numerical accuracy if you want digits. I often see this claim that only hydrogen is solvable, but I find it misleading. We have algorithms that will give solutions to the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation for helium to whatever degree of decimal precision you like (see FCI QMC methods) — how long these algorithms take to run is a different matter (see the fermion sign problem), but for helium it’s not too bad. The algorithms are unbiased, which I consider to be an exact solution. You can think of it in the same way that we have Monte Carlo solutions to the rendering equation for global illumination. They are not closed form in terms of arbitrary elementary functions, but they converge to the exact solution over time.
- danharaj 6y agoOnly hydrogen has an analytic solution. Even helium requires approximations because the electrons interact. Approximation requires an understanding of the structure of the wavefunction which gets increasingly complex as we add more particles to the system that interact and entangle with one another like electrons in an atom do. Even further, that's for single atoms that aren't interacting strongly with their environment. Here we're talking about an ensemble of nitrogen atoms interacting with each other in a somewhat extreme environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree%E2%80%93Fock_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree%E2%80%93Fock_method
- Vysero 6y agoThis makes me wonder, are there are any other elements in the periodic table which seem to be missing their allotropes or was N the only one?
- logfromblammo 6y ago> "the new substance is crystalline, occurs in two-dimensional sheets, and could one day be useful in advanced electronics." > "the material itself remains unstable and it quickly dissolves when the heat and pressure are relaxed." So... advanced electronics that can only exist at 1.4 million atmospheres and 4000 degrees C? What are we building, here, computers that only work inside the sun? By this insane standard, what material would not one day be useful in advanced electronics?
- peter303 6y agoSounds like a new weapon for the next Star Trek or James Bond movie.