Scientists at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany recently blasted cheap plastic with a super-powerful laser, and in the process created microscopic “nanodiamonds” and confirmed their existence. of a strange new kind of water.
By using a super-intense laser, scientists have taken the next step in transforming cheap plastic into “nano-diamonds”. The discovery was inspired by rain of diamonds that are thought to occur quite frequently on the icy giant planets of the Solar System, including Neptune and Uranus.
Using a high-powered optical laser, the physicists blasted a sheet of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic — the kind used in water and soda bottles — and then heated the plastic to about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,537 degrees Celsius). ) in an extremely short period of time, just one billionth of a second, Live Science reported.
As a result, this extreme heat created a pressure millions of times stronger than in Earth’s atmosphere, effectively compressing the plastic and destroying its molecular structure. The carbon atoms in the plastic begin to crystallize, leaving room for hydrogen and oxygen to drift out through the lattice.
Crystallized carbon turns into nanodiamonds the size of billionths of a meter, while hydrogen and oxygen turn into “super-ice water” or “super-advanced ice,” which Quanta magazine has described as a type of black, extremely dense ice. hot, possibly the most common form of water in the universe. According to New Scientist, this strange water has the ability to conduct electricity many times better than ordinary water.
Co-author of the study, physicist Dominik Kraus, explains: in practical applications, nanodiamonds could be used to convert carbon dioxide into other gases and deliver drugs into the human body.
And potentially, in the future, Kraus believes nanodiamonds could also be used as a kind of “microscopic and very precise quantum sensor for temperature and magnetic fields, which could lead to a lot of applications.” new in the future”.
In a successful test, the scientists took a sheet of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, a fairly common type found in plastic bottles, and shone it with a high-powered optical laser. . Under the Linac coherent light source, the plastic sheet is burned at nearly 6,000 degrees Celsius and is subjected to a pressure millions of times greater than the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere for just a billionth of a second.
The most practical application, however, is that the technique could help reduce plastic pollution by providing a financial incentive to clean plastic from the oceans and turn them into nanodiamonds.
Another researcher on the project, Siegfried Glenzer, from the SLAC National Accelerator laboratory in California, explained that scientists had previously been able to create nanodiamonds in a laboratory setting, but “The conditions under which this process is carried out are extremely complex and the diamonds end up falling apart.”
This new test produced diamonds at much lower pressures, and Glenzer thinks it could give physicists the opportunity to harvest nanodiamonds for study.
The experiment also helps physicists understand more about the nature of ice giants like Neptune and Uranus, whose strange conditions often baffle researchers.
Carbon in the form of crystals – or nanodiamonds is still a far cry from the sparkling diamonds we often see at jewelry stores. They are just diamonds of extremely small size, with only a few nanometers, or 1 billionth of a meter.
Like PET plastic, the insides of giant ice sheets also contain oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, but their internal pressure has never been thought to be strong enough to form nanodiamonds.
However, this new experiment demonstrated that nanodiamonds most likely formed at the core of giant icebergs, where heat can cause a reaction similar to what lasers do to PET plastic. , while also creating “diamond rain” inside gas giant planets.
“Perhaps diamonds are everywhere on gas giants,” says Glenzer. “If it happens at a lower pressure than we’ve seen before, that means they’re inside Uranus,” says Glenzer. , within Neptune, and some moons such as Titan”.
Diamonds moving throughout Neptune’s interior could create friction that explains the planet’s high temperatures, and the formation of super-ice water on Uranus could induce electric currents that cause its magnetic field to strange shape.
While these theories have yet to be proven, the new study provides solid evidence that nanodiamonds and super-ice water are indeed forming naturally on Neptune and Uranus.
Kraus says this theory could be confirmed within the next 10 years or so, when a NASA space probe will be launched to Uranus.
(Ref: Allthatsinteresting; Live Science; New Scientist; Quanta)
