|10-30-2006, 02:59 PM||#1| Join Date: Apr 2001 Brand new
substance created from water If you think we know all there is
to know about water, think again. Scientists claim they have
created a totally new alloy of hydrogen and oxygen molecules by
splitting water. It takes high-energy X-rays and an extremely
high pressure, but the end result is a solid mixture of H2 and
02 that has never been identified before, they say. The
discovery could change our understanding of the complex
chemistry of water. The new alloy is "a highly energetic
material", says Wendy Mao at Los Alamos National Laboratory, US,
who led the research. "It may help us find a way of storing
energy." Maoís team subjected water to a pressure 170,000 times
greater than atmospheric pressure at sea level. Then they
bombarded it with X-rays, causing the water molecules to split
and reform into a previously unknown crystalline solid made of
H2 molecules and 02 molecules. The phenomenon has been missed by
hundreds of previous experiments, researchers s