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New Type of Chemical Bond Predicted To Exist In White Dwarfs
ananyo writes "A previously unknown type of powerful chemical bond should be induced by the ferocious magnetic fields of white dwarfs and neutron stars, according to computer simulations. If the effect can be harnessed in the lab, 'magnetized matter' could be exploited for quantum computing. Chemists identify two classes of strong molecular bonds: ionic bonds, in which electrons from one atom hop over to another, and covalent bonds, in which electrons are shared between atoms. But researchers at the University of Oslo accidentally discovered a third bonding mechanism when they simulated how atoms should behave under magnetic fields of about 105 tesla — 10,000 times the biggest fields that can be generated on Earth (abstract)."
Should be 10 to the 5 Tesla, or 10^5, or 10**5 if you're a Fortran guy...
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-06/german-lab-generates-highest-magnetic-field-ever-created-lab
Using a two-layer, 440-pound copper coil the size of a water bucket, they managed to coax 91.4 teslas from their creation for just a few milliseconds, surpassing the previous record of 89 teslas.
Now I'll have to go and read the abstract...
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Why does it always have to be about race with you kids?
Our magnet crazed Floridians have a 45 tesla magnet that can operate for short periods without destroying itself and the most powerful 'destructive pulsed electromagnets' can reach ~1000 tesla, for their quite brief operational lives. (.flv of such a magnet giving its life for science)
They're destroying the sanctity of traditional chemical bonding!
"Though shalt not lie with an atom magnetically as one would lie with an atom electrostatically. It is an abomination."
- Pauliticus 18:22
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Apparently the author of TFA has never heard of a type of material known as a metal either.
I think I'll have to dig up the Science article to get really meangful info on this.
I was disappointed that the best thing they could come up with was applications in quantum computing- there could be a host of novel synthesis based on this bond.
love is just extroverted narcissism
First of all, why seems everybody forgets about the metallic bonds?
Covalent: that old, nice and sharing couple;
Ionic: same as above, but one of them is abusive and electron digger;
Metallic bond: communism of electrons (or orgy, if you prefer).You know, covalent and ionic aFirst: covalent and ionic aren't two "types" of bonds but extremes of the same continuum. Some bonds - like in hydrogen fluoride - lie pretty much between them, not being fully ionic or fully covalent.
Second thing: ironically, there is no such thing as "types" of bonds. These three categories above aren't "unmixable", you have "metallic" bonds with covalent properties (like gold loves to make), you have borderline covalent-ionic bonds (like HF), this kind of thing. Think in them as extremes in a triangle, while most real life bonds lie inside this triangle.
Lastly, about the article itself... seems like "quantum computing" is what they put when they cannot think in an application to a Chem or Phys discovery nowadays. And I understood they didn't found a new bond type or whatever; their discovery was "oh look, orbitals can be deformed by magnetic fields!".
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So, two atoms fused together via this magnetic bonding, do they need to be in this ludicrous magnetic field to remain bonded?
If we, somehow, got the teslas to make a molecule or two of these, would they continue to exist outside of the lab? OR, if we went skinny-dipping in a white dwarf and picked up a handful of this crazy goop, and brought it back to earth, would they persist?
Also, does anyone really have even the slightest clue to the properties of these molecules?
I don't see how this is applicable to computing. Good luck getting a magnetic field this strong in anything without destroying it. According to the scientists any attempt to reproduce fields like this always results in the equipment being completely destroyed.
That's racist.
A Dense Plasma Focus can produce Giga Gauss fields (1GG = 10^5 Tesla), though only in a very small space.
See for example:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/1770673_Advances_towards_pB11_Fusion_with_the_Dense_Plasma_Focus"
(Was the first link that came up at Google searching for "dense plasma focus gg")
James Bond.
I read this as basically saying that we are a millimeter closer to a quantum computer. Whatever apparatus is used to create these fields would cease to exist, according to the scientists who published the paper -- not surprising, given how chemistry changes under those conditions. The engineering challenges involved with making a scalable quantum computer remain just as big as they were before; this looks like a drop in a nearly-empty swimming pool to me.
Palm trees and 8
Shouldn't that be a ferrocious magnetic field?
Sorry, somebody had to say it...
Everybody and their dog already knew that orbitals are deformed by magnetic fields. What they found is that the model of how they deform is wrong at very intense fields.
Rethinking email
Don't forget disperson dominated van der Waals bonding.
The application to quantum computing is probably there to attract attention from slashdotters.
Mo00o
IANAP but it sounds like this suggests white dwarfs could be surrounded by something like
- partial shells and tissues of hydrogen, helium and perhaps other molecules with the necessary geometries
- onion like concentric shells
- or even if constantly jostling and not broadly connected, there are a lot of molecules all lined up end to end like antenna wires
- possibly coronal ejections would be made of such tissues, and would become disrupted with increasing distance from start
I wonder if any kind of observation could prove/disprove any of these conceivable structures.