While water is typically used to help put out fires, astronauts currently serving on the International Space Station (ISS) are working on a special type of H2O that actually has the opposite effect, NASA officials revealed on Friday.
According to Mike Hicks of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, the liquid is known as “supercritical water” and it is formed when ordinary water is compressed to a pressure of 217 atmospheres and heated to temperatures greater than 373 degrees Celsius – known as the critical point.
Under those conditions, regular water becomes something that does not fit into any of the three basic states of matter. Rather than being a pure solid, liquid or gas, Hicks explains that it becomes more of a “liquid-like gas,” and when it is mixed with organic materials, it undergoes a chemical reaction and oxidizes. Read more
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