For the first time, scientists have directly observed hydrogen and oxygen atoms combining to create nano-sized water bubbles in real-time at the molecular level.
Materials scientist Vinayak Dravid of Northwestern University and his colleagues believe these may be “the smallest bubbles ever seen.”
Vinayak Dravid said:
“Think of Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, in the movie The Martian. He burned rocket fuel to extract hydrogen and then added oxygen from his oxygenator. Our process is analogous, except we bypass the need for fire and other extreme conditions. We simply mixed palladium and gasses together.”
Scientist Yukun Liu of Northwestern University, explains:
“You really need to be able to combine the direct visualization of water generation and the structure analysis at the atomic scale in order to figure out what’s happening.”
“We think it might be the smallest bubble ever formed that has been viewed directly. It’s not what we were expecting. Luckily, we were recording it, so we could prove to other people that we weren’t crazy.”
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Leave A Comment