Gold remains perfectly solid when briefly heated beyond previously hypothesized limits, a new study reports, which may mean a complete reevaluation of how matter behaves under extreme conditions. The international team of scientists behind the study used intense, super-short laser blasts to push thin fragments of gold past a limit known as the entropy catastrophe; the point at which a …
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Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory It’s not easy to surprise physicists with a phase change. Yet when Tom White first reviewed the data from a new experiment that used lasers to heat gold, he had to pause and double-check his results. He had good reason to be skeptical. White and his colleagues had just observed solid gold reaching an …
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Researchers have been able to heat up a sample of solid gold to over 14 times its melting temperature for a fraction of a second, bypassing a theoretical limit known as the entropy catastrophe. The approach, known as superheating, might lead to a better understanding of how substances change phase at a fundamental level and even to improved production of …
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