Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
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Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#2"This is an unexpected phenomenon, contrary to what we thought we knew about nanopore transport. It took three years to work out what it was the simulations were showing us. After exploring many potential solutions, the breakthrough came when we realized that we should not assume water is incompressible. Now that we understand what's happening in the computer simulations, we are able to reproduce this phenomenon in theoretical calculations."
Pretty interesting that the rules of the simulation were such that it took three years to explain an emergent phenomenon. I probably would have written it off as floating point shenanigans.
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#3This page, or something it loads, is causing Firefox to use 100% CPU. Cryptocurrency malware, perhaps?
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#4That is a really neat effect. Basically if you can put a water molecule inside a flat field it lines itself up with that field and can be compressed. I would bet this has an impact on Graphene based desalination efforts as well.
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#5Does this also mean compressing/decompressing water can generate an electric field?
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#6> Aksimentiev adds, "All of this only works because the membrane is so thin, and the electric field is focused where the membrane is, compressing the water molecule from both sides.
It's not _pushing_ the molecules together, rather _pulling_ them together. This happens because the electric field is smaller than the water molecule, and pulls from inside.
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#7That is a really neat effect. Basically if you can put a water molecule inside a flat field it lines itself up with that field and can be compressed. I would bet this has an impact on Graphene based desalination efforts as well.
This sounds akin to electrons forming Cooper pairs in atoms.
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#8Does this also mean compressing/decompressing water can generate an electric field?
Probably, but it would take a lot of mechanical force. From the article:
> The compression is only 3 percent, but that pressurizes the water—it's equivalent to 100 atmospheres
Although, that's not uncommon for ice giants, so it might be causing part of Ouranos (aka Uranus) magnetic field.
> The troposphere is thought to have a highly complex cloud structure; water clouds are hypothesised to lie in the pressure range of 50 to 100 bar[1]
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#9Does this also mean compressing/decompressing water can generate an electric field?
Nah, probably not.from how i read it, is not that the field is strong, but that it's so incredibly localised. The molecules arrange along the field lines (H being more positive and O more negative). Since the field lines are so close in this case, and the field's gradient (more or less: inverse of width between field lines) is so high, the O parts snuggle together a bit more, as do the H parts.
Anyway, that's how i read the article. (Please correct me if I'm wrong)
Compressing water, however, does not force the molecules to align (as far as I know). So no field generation by compression - at least not from my understanding of this experiment.
Re: Water compresses under a high gradient electric field
#10That is a really neat effect. Basically if you can put a water molecule inside a flat field it lines itself up with that field and can be compressed. I would bet this has an impact on Graphene based desalination efforts as well.
That type of filtering was also something that I had in mind.
It would additionally be interesting if the water would react to EM fields and confined spaces in a way that allowed for a 'micro' pump. Such a system might be able to operate in zero-g and thus be useful on extended space missions.