Planetary cores aquatic

Uranus and Neptune also bring their extravagant droplet. We do not know their internal structure, but it is now generally accepted that have three layers: an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, a cloak-possibly liquid water, ammonia and methane, and a nucleus with the same composition to which we must add a set rocky. Other scientists are advocating a model of two layers: an extremely dense atmosphere with a 50% water and a rocky core.

We are facing one of the great mysteries of planetology and assumptions soar. Some scenarios suggest even the existence of an ocean superheated located 8,000 km deep.

For its part, the interior of Titan may be composed in part by ice at different pressures and a layer of liquid water. Yet, in our neighbourhood space, the neighbor who takes the palm is certainly Mars.

Million years ago, the arid and dry Red Planet was a very different place we know today. Not only was warmer and more dense atmosphere, but the water ran by its surface. For the Ares Vallis was circulated friolera of 1,000 million cubic meters per second, an amount that leaves nothing in the 300,000 Amazon or the impressive 60 million from the large waterfall that was formed at the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar and that it filled Today is the Mediterranean after this was dry 5.5 million years ago.

Planetology Some even believe that Mars was a big ocean. With 65 million cubic meters and 1,700 meters deep media, the assumption Oceanus Borealis could cover the plains of the northern third of the planet and coexist with a huge South Pole.

Hydrogen: Is the future fuel?

Since we know that oil extraction has end date (say the last barrels will be pumped into 2080), giving researchers walk laps at the head to find something to replace him. And they say they have given to this: is the hydrogen.

But how do we get it, save it as? The route proposed by the marine biologist Jack Legrand, the French CNRS, is using microalgae.
After studying their metabolism that is capable of producing hydrogen without the need for sunlight and water, this is about to create a reactor to produce hydrogen.

New Method to Obtain Water starting from Hydrogen and Oxygen

In a well-known chemistry demonstration in the secondary education, a professor uses the electricity first to separate the liquid water in his component gases, hydrogen and oxygen. Then, combining the two gases and lighting them with a spark, the instructor transforms the gases into water with a very audible noise.

Some scientists in the University of Illinois have discovered a new form of obtaining water, and without necessity of the explosion. They cannot only obtain the water starting from unlikely initial materials, as the alcohols, but rather their work can also take to produce better catalysts, and less expensive cells of fuel.

Zachariah Heiden and Thomas Rauchfuss has discovered that hidruros of non conventional metals can be used for a chemical process that is essential part of the process of formation of the water.

The professor of chemical Thomas Rauchfuss,
to the left, and the student
graduated Zachariah Heiden

A molecule of water is composed by two atoms of hydrogen and an oxygen atom. But it cannot simply take two atoms of hydrogen and to hit them with an oxygen atom. The real reaction of formation of the water is a little more complicated. To produce two molecules of water (H2O), two molecules of hydrogen diatómico (H2) they should combine with a molecule of oxygen diatómico (O2); and energy will be liberated in the process.

This reaction (2H2 + O2 = 2H2O + Energy) it is known for two centuries, but up to now nobody has made it work in a homogeneous solution.

This very well-known reaction also describes what happens inside a cell of fuel of hydrogen.

In a typical cell of fuel, the gas hydrogen diatómico enters for an end of the cell, and the gas oxygen diatómico enters for the other end. The molecules of hydrogen lose their electrons and they are loaded positively through a process denominated oxidation, while the oxygen molecules win four electrons and they are loaded negatively through a process denominated reduction. The loaded oxygen ions negatively combine positively with the loaded ions of hydrogen, to obtain water and to liberate electric power.

The side difficult of the cell of fuel it is the reaction of reduction of the oxygen, not the reaction of oxidation of the hydrogen. "However, we have checked that the new catalysts for the reduction of the oxygen can also take to new chemical means for the oxidation of the hydrogen", Rauchfuss explains.

Rauchfuss and Heiden have investigated a relatively new generation of catalysts for their use in the reduction of the oxygen. The investigators have concentrated especially on certain catalysts based on the iridium. They found that the complex effects of the iridium produce the oxidation of the alcohols so much, as the reduction of the oxygen.

"Most of the compounds react with the hydrogen or with the oxygen, but this catalyst reacts with both", Heiden underlines.

The new catalysts could lead to the future development of more efficient cells of fuel of hydrogen, diminishing their cost substantially.