Gold's Extreme Transformation: Unveiling New Frontiers in Material Science

Scientists have achieved a significant breakthrough by superheating gold to temperatures far beyond its melting point, challenging long-standing theories in material science. In a recent experiment, researchers utilized a laser to rapidly heat a nanometer-thin gold foil, causing its atoms to vibrate at high speeds. By measuring the frequency shifts of ultrabright X-rays passing through the sample, they directly determined the temperature of the gold atoms. Remarkably, the gold remained solid at temperatures exceeding 19,000 kelvins, well beyond its typical melting point of approximately 1,337 kelvins. This finding overturns the "entropy catastrophe" theory, which posited that solids cannot remain stable above three times their melting temperature without spontaneously melting. The rapid heating prevented the gold from expanding, allowing it to retain its solid crystalline structure. This discovery opens new avenues for understanding material behavior under extreme conditions and could have implications for various fields, including fusion energy research and the study of planetary interiors. The research was conducted by an international team, including scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and was published in the journal Nature.