A Breakthrough in the hunt for Metallic Hydrogen? [Update 2020]

a little over three years ago scientists at harvard claimed to have created the first symbol of metallic hydrogen almost a century after it was first theorized but as it turned out the sample they had developed was lost in the process and a lot of the claims they made were received with criticism and skepticism the hunt for metallic hydrogen started decades ago and lots of previous claims have all been discredited it turns out that french scientists called almost everything into question from the harvard's team research not only what they claim to have achieved but how and when it happens their research is by far the most plausible to date and a lot of experts in this field seems to agree with it is it possible that they finally have done it [Music] hello everyone subject zero here physicist eugene wigner and dr hillard bell huntington first proposed that hydrogen could occur in a metallic state back in 1935. at first they predicted that the pressure necessary to produce metallic hydrogen should be around 25 gpa fast forward to 2017 a paper was published claiming to have created the first observed sample of metallic hydrogen two physicists isaac silvera and ranga diaz at lyman laboratories of physics harvard university claimed to have produced metallic hydrogen with 495 gpa of pressure this is equivalent to almost 5 million atmospheres and about 1.35 times the pressure encountered at the earth's center i must point out that how and when hydrogen transforms into its metal state is still a mystery but it is this search that made experimental high pressure physics evolve to such levels to achieve this immense pressure there are usually two methods to choose from then being static and dynamic in this case almost all research on metallic hydrogen is using the static method with a diamond anvil cell or dac for short dac is a straightforward technique you have two diamonds opposite of each other that compresses a simple to extreme pressures usually in between 100 to 200 gpa with a few tweaks and optimizations you could achieve pressures as high as 770 gpa however that is not something easy to do this was the first main criticism toward harvard research as it wasn't clear as to how the physicists were able to achieve such high pressures you see conventional diamond tips are fundamentally limited to 400 gpas of pressure due to its shape as team harvard acknowledges they had to come up with a rigorous strategy to overcome that problem in addition hydrogen can be harmful to the diamond during the process hydrogen may diffuse into the diamond structure as the pressure increases this in turn creates defects rendering the diamond useless to counter this issue they added a diffusion barrier to an extremely well polished diamond surface to stop hydrogen from interacting with its structure for this they used alumina or aluminum oxide to create the diffusion barrier this was another point of criticism since the metallic observation could have been caused in part from this aluminum layer lastly there is the fact that they lost their simple and so far have been having problems trying to replicate their first findings knowing these reasons no wonder the research was received with a lot of criticism and skepticism nonetheless where they failed a french team might have succeeded one of the main issues with the harvard experiment was that there was no way to really test the sample they had created the idea behind using diamonds is that you can test a given symbol using infrared and x-rays if anything is in between the sample and the diamonds you might end up with a false positive the only way to really test metallic hydrogen would be to run an electric current through it a team led by french physicist paul levier used an updated version of the dac method and are claiming to have produced metallic hydrogen well at least they stated that the results are consistent with the transition from liquid to metallic as predicted by supercomputer algorithms the trick was to use a new diamond tip shaped into a toroidal format it was first introduced back in 2018 only one year after the harvard team made its first observations before this the diamond was shaped with squared faces that looked something like this side by side and the difference is apparent by just changing the form of the diamond tip some experiments have reached tpa levels opening a new door to high pressure physics research and solving one of the major limitations of this technique this is how it works the diamonds are placed into an anvil cell onto bases called seeds these seeds are responsible for transmitting the load from the cell to the diamonds they must be really strong and able to handle high temperatures one such material that was designed for this specific task is tungsten carbide the sample is placed into a gasket that is designed to contain the sample with a hole that is typically less than 500 microns both solids and liquid samples can be examined with dac as long as they do not damage the diamond surface the compression usually turns the simple into a circular film of about 30 microns thick keep in mind that the majority of the pressure generated is concentrated at the center of the sample at the edges pressure is equal to 1 atm so the gradient is extreme another problem solved was that it made it easier to adapt a synchrotron system to test samples at these extreme pressures it allows for bigger samples in microscopic levels to be used which makes possible for a large selection of characterization methods to be used including synchrotron beam lines with the conventional method it was only possible to characterize samples at pressures up to 100 gpa tests showed with astonishing precision a change from insulator to metal when reaching 425 gpas of pressure almost 70 gpa less than previously reported they tested the sample with a synchrotron beam that measured the bend gap difference of the hydrogen while pressure was being applied in this case the diminishing bend gap from 0.6 to 0.1 electron vote should be due to the formation of the metallic state since the nucleus zero point energy is larger than this lower band gap value what they also observed was that all of the previous hydrogen transformations happen at much lower pressures for instance the transformation from transparent to opaque happened at around 310 gpa while previous reports claimed 415 gpa at the end of the experiment the french team was able to recover the diamond tip fully intact this goes against the claim from the harvard team that used aluminum oxide to stop the hydrogen interaction that led to diamond failure and that is not all the fact that the harvard team used screws to tighten and apply pressure may be the culprit for diamond failure among other issues raised by the research on the opposite hand the french team used a membrane to apply pressure more evenly giving out more accurate measures of pressure hence why we have such a big difference however current findings by the french team have not been peer reviewed yet and most likely will take some time to be verified by experts in the field lubia reacted with a heavy dose of skepticism towards the 2017 paper and is most likely under a lot of pressure to be right with his research most likely the verdict will be out next year and if findings are positive for the french team this means instant nobel prize and a whole new field of rocket propulsion alright folks that's it we're done here [Music] you

Channel: Subject Zero Science

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Keywords: Subject Zero Science, graphene, metallic hydrogen, rockets, rocket fuel, hydrogen, Harvard, Paul Loubeyre, hugh pressure, physics, breakthrough, update, metallic hydrogen rocket, metallic hydrogen jupiter, metallic hydrogen superconductor, metallic hydrogen fuel, metallic hydrogen engine, metallic hydrogen rocket engine, science, nasa, education, chemistry, metal, space, jupiter, new discovery, metallic hydrogen fusion

Id: 4l4M4PdiGpk

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020