Scientists have found the hottest water ever -- water so hot that it exists in a state between gas and liquid.
Described in a study published in Geology and this excellent New Scientist article, the water was discovered by German oceanographers at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Spewed by vents sitting atop a pocket of magma, the water reaches temperatures as high as 467 degrees Celsius.
Under everyday, tea-making conditions, water boils at a mere 99.7 degrees Celsius. But combine magmatic hotness with deep-sea atmospheric pressures, explains New Scientist, "and something odd happens: the gas and liquid phase merge into one supercritical fluid. For water, this fluid is denser than vapour, but lighter than liquid water."
That's pretty amazing. But even more amazing, I'll wager, is colonization of the supercritical water by supercritically specialized bacteria -- and indeed I have made this wager with Wired.com editor Dylan Tweney, who has yet to be swayed by the awesome power of microbes.
Bacteria have been found thriving inside nuclear reactors and volcanoes, and revived after million-year freezes; their kingdom stretches far beneath oceans, with sub-seafloor bugs accounting for up to ten percent of Earth's biomass.Compared to all that, what's a bit of hot water?
Image: University of Bremen
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
