A new state of water has been discovered. Free Technical Library News

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New water state discovered

26.09.2020

Supercooled water is two liquids in one. American researchers came to this conclusion after conducting the first-ever measurements of liquid water at temperatures well below its usual freezing point.

Despite the extremely wide distribution, water as a chemical substance is still not fully understood. Scientists sometimes call it the most mysterious substance on Earth.

The fact is that water is not like other liquids - when it freezes, it expands, and does not shrink, like everyone else, its density decreases. Therefore, water ice does not sink, but floats on the surface. Water has a high boiling point and is an excellent solvent, therefore, under various conditions, most organic and inorganic substances dissolve in it. And finally, it has a huge coefficient of surface tension. Thanks to all these unique properties, water has become the basis of life on Earth.

Water has another interesting quality - it freezes very "reluctantly". If other liquids begin to solidify gradually, immediately after they pass the freezing point, then water "resists" to the last. And to start hardening, it always needs crystallization nuclei - suspended particles of mineral or organic origin.

Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) of the US Department of Energy decided to test, if there are no such particles, up to what temperature the water will remain liquid.

It is known that water can be present in clouds in the form of supercooled drops even at very low temperatures, and then, when fine ice dust gets into these clouds from above, from higher and colder layers, the drops instantly crystallize and fall to the ground in the form of ice pellets. or hail.

Scientists in the laboratory destroyed a thin ice film with a laser, creating supercooled liquid water, and then, using infrared spectroscopy, tracked all the smallest stages of its transformations in the temperature range from 135 to 245 kelvins - from minus 138 to minus 28 degrees Celsius.

On freeze-frames of the phase states, the scientists saw that when supercooled, water condenses into a dense liquid phase, which continues to coexist with the normal liquid phase. At the same time, the proportion of liquid with high density decreases rapidly as the temperature rises from 190 to 245 Kelvin.

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The existence of a time loop has been proven 28.08.2018

Scientists at the University of Queensland in Australia have demonstrated that, in terms of quantum mechanics, two different events can precede each other at the same time. Violation of the causal relationship was demonstrated using the polarization of photons in the interferometer.

In the course of the study, physicists passed photons through an interferometer - a device with which a beam of electromagnetic radiation is divided into several beams going through different optical paths (A and B). Eventually, the two beams recombine and overlap each other, resulting in interference. The setup was assembled in such a way that, with vertical polarization, the photon will choose the left path, then return back and hit the right side of the interferometer. With horizontal polarization, the particle first goes along the right path, and then along the left.

However, with diagonal polarization, the quantum wave describing the position of the photon "splits", moving along both paths simultaneously. The vertically and horizontally polarized components first go each along their own path, return back, and switch to an adjacent path. Thus, both components go along each path at once, that is, the photon seems to go along both paths at the same time. At the end of each path, the photon splits again, with one component coming back and the other leaving the setup.

In this case, it is very difficult to determine which event precedes the other: either the return of the polarized components to the beginning of the paths creates the appearance of the photon passing along A and B simultaneously (the photon passes first along one path, and then along the other), or the splitting of the "forked" photon into the end of each of the paths causes a one-time return of the components to the beginning of each path (and then the photon actually passes along both paths simultaneously).

To solve this problem, scientists conducted a series of experiments, each time inserting additional lenses into the installation, which change the spatial distribution of the light beam. This allows you to change the polarization of the photon at the moment when the quantum waves are again superimposed on each other. If each photon in the beam first traveled one path and then another, then the resulting polarization of the photon must correspond to a certain value. However, the researchers found that it was impossible to determine in the experiment which of the events actually causes the other. In other words, both processes are cause and effect of each other.

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