Science or Mythbusters?
I thought it was only TV celebs who got paid to blow things up. I mean, firing a big freaking laser at a pool of hydrocarbons. What could possibly go wrong?
Boffins with frickin' laser beams chase universe's mysterious trihydrogen
Scientists are getting closer to piecing together the chemical reactions that form trihydrogen, one of the most abundant yet mysterious ions floating around in space. Trihydrogen, H3+, is an important molecule. It is believed that the tiny ion kickstarted a whole chain of reactions that led to the birth of the first stars in …
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Thursday 6th July 2017 08:42 GMT JimC
Re why the interest in making H3 from hydrocarbons ?
Because we can?
from the linked paper again,
"The study of laser-matter interactions using intense laser fields has been an active area of research since the emergence of femtosecond lasers and has led to the discovery of several interesting phenomena"
It goes on to say that early research has concentrated on atoms, but is moving on to the much more complicated things involved in molecules, and one presumes methane based molecules are relatively simple and well understood. The impression I get from the paper is not that this is a radical new development, but simply another step on a path that's already identified.
After all isn't the reason for and interest in doing pure research into weird stuff very much that you don't know where it will end up?
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Thursday 6th July 2017 09:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re why the interest in making H3 from hydrocarbons ?
isn't the reason for and interest in doing pure research into weird stuff very much that you don't know where it will end up?
OK, granted, but I can't help but think that if these people ever found a giant plughole in the Universe, there would be at least one of them who would be prepared to pull the plug, just to see what would happen :).
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Friday 7th July 2017 00:04 GMT Meph
Re: Re why the interest in making H3 from hydrocarbons ?
"there would be at least one of them who would"
This may well be some inescapable proof that at some level, all humans are fundamentally the same. The geek equivalent of "hold my beer" if you will.
I doubt you'll ever find a career information sheet on science that would talk about "scientists standing on the backs of smoking corpses who did something ill advised and it went wrong". It might not send quite the right message to impressionable young minds.
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Friday 7th July 2017 02:51 GMT Long John Brass
Re: Re why the interest in making H3 from hydrocarbons ?
I doubt you'll ever find a career information sheet on science that would talk about "scientists standing on the backs of smoking corpses who did something ill advised and it went wrong". It might not send quite the right message to impressionable young minds.
au contraire: I rather suspect that things go boom would a massive draw-card for most young budding scientists and engineers.
To stop things from going ka-boom you need to know WHY things go ka-boom, this requires many and varied experiments on things going ka-boom!
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Friday 7th July 2017 18:48 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Hydrocarbons and First Stars
"why the interest in making H3 from hydrocarbons"
I'm thinking a couple of things at the moment:
a) more efficient way of storing hydrogen for fuel cells and/or burning in an engine
b) possible use as fusion fuel (since it loves being an ion, and has 3 hydrogen atoms in it, you could accelerate it and magnetically confine it, for example, in a possible reactor design that had fuel going in on one side, helium going out on the other)
in EITHER case, being able to make it cheaply has some immediate benefits.
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Thursday 6th July 2017 08:55 GMT Ian K
Power, not Energy
"The energy from the first laser pulse delivers a whopping 10^13 watts/cm2 in 35 millionths of a billionth of a second"
A watt's already a measure of energy applied in a period of time, so I'm pretty sure that should be "10^13 watts/cm2 for 35 millionths of a billionth of a second".
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Thursday 6th July 2017 09:36 GMT John Smith 19
The point is H3+ is really unstable in anything like a normal environment.
This thing really wants to react.
So how come there's so much of it floating around?
Now it turns out that there are at least 2 pathways to produce it, one of which could occur not just in a near perfect vacuum but in denser media. Don't think lasers, think very close to a star.
The payoff is when this mechanism is used to update early universe formation models to show what this does to the levels of H3+.
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Thursday 6th July 2017 09:52 GMT Steve K
Re: The point is H3+ is really unstable in anything like a normal environment.
Don't shoot me down, but could this account for any of the missing matter discrepancy - i.e. we have assumed molecular H2 floating around but it is actually H3 so is ~50% more mass per Hydrogen molecule?
Or am I talking cr@p?
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Thursday 6th July 2017 11:10 GMT John Smith 19
" i.e. we have assumed molecular H2 floating around but it is actually H3 "
Don't know.
Logically the "overall mass number" field in such models comes from the proportions of different types in the model, so it should be derived and track the species automatically.
But IRL it could be a parameter that can be twiddled directly. All it would take is someone forgetting to twiddle it in time with the proportions and hey presto, instant "missing matter" mystery.
Only someone who writes, or runs, these sims would be able to say for sure.
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Thursday 6th July 2017 11:14 GMT MJB7
Re: Missing matter
No, I'm afraid not. If all the missing matter mass is the form of baryons (protons and neutrons) there would have been rather more fusion going on just after the big bang. The result would have been rather more Helium and Lithium in the universe.
I remember a talk given by Professor Sir Herman Bondi in the 80's where he was asked about the missing mass problem (actually, "missing light"). His preferred solution was "bricks". Dust (aka "soot") is too visible in long wavelengths; enough Jupiter sized-objects would show up at other wavelengths. Things the size of a brick (about 1kg) would solve the problem nicely.
... but we now either need something *really* exotic, or our fundamental theories are wrong. I keep hoping we can get rid of "Dark Energy" and replace it with a new theory of gravitation.
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Thursday 6th July 2017 12:40 GMT eldakka
Re: The point is H3+ is really unstable in anything like a normal environment.
@Steve K
Don't shoot me down, but could this account for any of the missing matter discrepancy - i.e. we have assumed molecular H2 floating around but it is actually H3 so is ~50% more mass per Hydrogen molecule?
No, this doesn't change the amount of hydrogen, just the proportion of different forms.
For example (made up numbers):
they might estimate 1000 hydrogen atoms per m3, made up of
- 100 'free floating' (H) atoms and
- 450 paired H2 molecules.
Changing that to
- 90 free floating H
- + 20H3
- + 425H2
still = 1000 hydrogen atoms (i.e. protons) m3.
Also note, that dark:baronic matter ratio is ~ 6:1, therefore even if H3 was something unaccounted for (which it isn't since it is still baryonic matter, 3 protons) then more than just a little bit extra would be needed to account for that discrepancy.
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Friday 7th July 2017 18:57 GMT bombastic bob
"What happens to the single electron(s)?"
after dancing with a number of other ions, it leaves the bar, having not been able to 'react' with anything all night, despite the purchasing of adult beverages and classic lines, and falls asleep in his own bed, alone.
And the H3 it was divorced from gets the house, kids, investments, etc. after the lawyer takes him to the cleaners. For being an electron.
(It's a tragic story)
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
