From transparent aluminum to philosophical stone

It all starts from the predictions of fiction writers. The all-new aluminum-transparent material - successfully produced by British physicists was a quarter-century ago in the movie ' Star Trek IV '.

In order to do this, the scientists bombarded the metal with a soft laser beam emitted from the world's most powerful laser device. This invention has created a new conjugate state of matter and is looking for applications in many areas.

Flash laser (Photo: Trendsupdates)

The Oxford University team fired short-cycle X-ray pulses into an aluminum foil. Huge energy, up to 10 million gigawatts (10 million watts) over 1cm ² , thus separating electrons from atomic nuclei while the structure of the metal remains unchanged. As a result, this aluminum foil becomes transparent under ultraviolet light.

One of the main authors of the study, physics professor Justin Wark recounted: ' We have created a completely new state of matter that no one has ever seen before. But aluminum

Professor Justin Wark .
(Photo: 3nglish.co.uk)

transparent, that's just the first step. The physical properties of the substance that we make are very similar to the material at the deep depths of the big planets. So during the study, we hope to understand many new things about them and about the formation of very small stars '.

New insights gained from this process will greatly support the development of nuclear synthesis technology in the future. In addition, scientists believe that it will be soon to invent a new type of radioactivity by artificial methods, tens of billions times stronger than all the types that mankind once knew.

In order to create transparent aluminum, the team used the same laser laser FLASH device, which flashes an energy equal to the energy that a power plant emits to serve a small city each time. . The whole capacity is directed to a target that is only one-twentieth of a hair area.

Transparent aluminum is very unstable, it only exists under the effect of laser for a few parts of a second. But its lifespan is not the purpose of the study. First of all, scientists want to prove that, thanks to powerful laser devices, people can create a whole new state of matter.

Experimental diagram.

In answering the question of what purpose to do, Professor Wark smiled and replied: ' Under certain conditions, aluminum bombardment with ray ray, we can turn this substance into a very new state of stability. is silicon . In fact, we can convert this element into another element. That is the philosophical stone of the ancient alchemists, allowing to turn garbage into gold . '

Of course, a hypothetical assumption takes a lot of time. The energy consumption for that metabolism is so great that it cannot take into account an economic effect. But for theoretical physics and to demonstrate the achievements of modern science, the invention of ' transparent aluminum ' is an important achievement of a century scale.