European researchers created the world’s fastest heating “water heater”, heating water to 100,000 degrees Celsius in less than 75 femtoseconds. A femtosecond is only equivalent to one quadrillionth of a second.
A study published on the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States on the 14th showed that researchers in Germany and Sweden used the X-ray laser 'linear accelerator-related light source' of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to convert water from liquid to plasma instantaneously.
The researchers said that when boiling water is used to increase the water temperature by accelerating the molecular movement of water, but this experiment is different from ordinary boiling water principle. High-energy X-rays attack the electrons in water molecules, thus destroying the charge balance, and suddenly The atoms that feel the repulsion will begin to exercise vigorously, causing the temperature to rise.
The co-author of the paper, Olof Jonson of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, said that atoms deprived of electrons form a plasma, which is a charged gas, and the water in the plasma state still has the density of liquid water. This is because the atoms are too late to separate too far.
The researchers said that in addition to studying the strange characteristics of water, this experiment also provided a model for the use of high-energy X-rays to study the atomic structure of trace samples.