Discover What Happens to Gold When It’s Superheated Beyond Its Melting Point!

Scientists have made a shocking discovery about gold: it can withstand extreme heat without melting. A recent study shows that gold can be heated to 14 times its usual melting point before it melts. This changes how we understand solid materials under high temperatures.

Typically, scientists believed that the “entropy catastrophe”—the point where a solid becomes too hot to stay solid—was three times the melting point. Using advanced laser technology, researchers were able to push gold well beyond this limit, reaching temperatures of 19,000 Kelvin (about 18,700 °C or 33,700 °F) for a tiny fraction of a second, specifically over 2 picoseconds. During this brief moment, the gold maintained its solid form.

This phenomenon is known as “superheating.” It occurs when a material is heated so quickly that it doesn’t have time to change from solid to liquid. While the findings may seem to contradict established physics, they actually align with the laws of thermodynamics. At these high temperatures, the atoms in the gold are trapped in place and can’t move, allowing the material to remain solid for just a moment before eventually melting.

The study has broad implications. For example, understanding how materials behave under such conditions can help scientists better comprehend processes like asteroid collisions in space or events in nuclear reactors on Earth. As physicist Thomas White from the University of Nevada noted, this research prompts new questions about the limits of superheating.

In future studies, researchers will investigate whether other materials behave similarly to gold. This could lead to a new understanding of when solids lose their solid state. It’s a reminder that science is always evolving, challenging our assumptions about the world around us.

If you want to dig deeper into the study, you can find it published in Nature.

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