Scientists Built The World's Fastest Water Heater, And It Sounds Totally Insane

[rangerrebew]

Scientists Built The World's Fastest Water Heater, And It Sounds Totally Insane

Also, it transforms water into a completely new physical state.
MIKE MCRAE
18 MAY 2018

Forget warming your morning coffee in the microwave; a laser pulse made of X-rays has set a record for heating a few microlitres of water to 100,000 degrees Celsius in 75 millionths of a billionth of a second.

We wouldn't recommend drinking the plasma, at least not without blowing on it first. But the product could help us better understand water's unusual properties while improving how we carry out delicate investigations that rely on powerful X-ray lasers.

https://www.sciencealert.com/x-ray-heated-water-ionises-new-state-in-75-femtoseconds

[Free Vulcan]

"Normally, when you heat water, the molecules will just be shaken stronger and stronger." 

Instead, the flash of X-rays punched the electrons right off the water molecules, setting them off balance.

Sounds like the x-ray laser may have some military applications.

[RoosGirl]

Sounds like the x-ray laser may have some military applications.

Yeah, that cannot do good things to the water in the human body.

[driftdiver]

Probably came from military research.   They've spent a lot on lethal and less than lethal methods of crowd control.

One of those was a weapon which could cause burns as a method of crowd dispersal.  I thought they used microwaves for that but perhaps this works better.