Polywater

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The term polywater (also called anomalous water or dense water ) is understood to mean the theory that surface effects can result in a polymer structure of the water that has special physical properties. The so-called "polywater", the research of which took place mainly in the USSR in the 1960s , could no longer be reproduced after a period of about ten years of research and is often cited as an example of pathological science .

history

The phenomenon was first observed in 1962 by the Russian researcher Nikolai N. Fedyakin in a laboratory in the Russian city of Kostroma . During long-term experiments in capillaries , he noticed that in a few capillaries separations between different water columns had taken place. Amazed, because it was supposed to be the same substance and therefore there was no reason for separation, Fedyakin examined the separated components - as best he could due to the fineness of the capillaries. Apparently the boiling point of the condensed liquid was much higher than that of normal water.

When Fedyakin reported his results, Boris Derjagin took over the investigation of this obviously modified water . Derjagin was a respected experimental physicist and knew that impurities can drastically change the properties of substances. So he ran a few tests which, to his satisfaction, showed that they couldn't be artifacts . Further experiments were carried out in capillaries made of Pyrex and quartz glass , which were supposed to prevent any components from being dissolved out. According to the Soviet scientists, the water used was tested for the highest purity and the capillaries cleaned and kept clean as well as possible.

properties

The liquid under investigation, then still called anomalous water or modified water , had supposedly amazing properties. The viscosity was comparable to that of syrup and 15 times higher than that of normal water. The thermal expansion was one and a half times that of normal water, it only solidified at below −30 ° C, and the solidification did not take place at a freezing point, but over a freezing interval down to −60 ° C. The modified water boiled at a temperature of 150 ° C to 250 ° C and had a density of 1100 to 1400 kg per cubic meter (ordinary water has a density of 1000 kg / m³); the values ​​depended on the test conditions. Modified water also had a density maximum before solidification, but the highest density was only reached at −8 ° C. However, the modified water only formed in a maximum of 30% to 40% of the capillaries examined, and the capillary itself was not allowed to have an inside diameter of more than 0.1 mm, which made the experimental investigation difficult.

reaction

While up to 27 scientists in the Soviet Union were busy evaluating and carrying out experiments on anomalous water , the work in the West was overlooked due to a lack of competent translation capacities and an underestimation of the scientific work in the USSR. An IUPAC congress was held in Moscow in 1965 , but again the inadequate translation system did not make the supposed meaning of Derjagin's work sufficiently clear. In September 1966 the world-renowned Faraday discussion event was held in Nottingham , and Derjagin took the opportunity to explain his work there. The chosen title of his lecture, however, rather obscured the scope of his work, so that he received hardly any attention.

However, as Derjagin visited and lectured in various laboratories in England, English researchers eventually became aware, and some succeeded in reproducing abnormal water. However, even then, other laboratories had problems producing this water, which Derjagin explained with insufficient experience of the experimenters.

On May 24, 1969, a study of the anomalous water produced by Lyonel J. Bellamy was published under the direction of the American spectroscopist Ellis R. Lippincott. This came to the unequivocal conclusion that it must be a different substance than ordinary water, a previously unknown molecular chain of water, so to speak “polymerized water” or “polywater” for short.

On June 27, 1969, Lippincott and his colleague RR Stromberg published a summarizing article “Polywater” about their findings in the journal Nature .

Mood of optimism and hysteria

After publication, a flood of scientific publication and research broke out in the West. Magazines filled with sensational news (partly because of the animosity towards the USSR it was given the impression that it was a western invention). An American scientist, FJ Donahue, took Derjagin's assumption that polywater was the most stable form of water extremely seriously and warned against producing polywater without extreme precautions.

If polywater were really more stable than normal water, it would force normal water on contact to change its configuration to that of polywater: All water on earth would be irreversibly converted one by one and life would cease to exist - analogous to supercooled water that comes into contact with a seed crystal and immediately begins to crystallize. This doomsday scenario was previously described in Kurt Vonnegut 's novel “Cat's Cradle” with the then hypothetical substance Eis-IX (ice nine). It should be noted that the now discovered, real Ice-IX has nothing in common with its literary form.

The answer from scientists in the same issue of Nature was that it was extremely difficult to make polywater and that water near quartz had existed on Earth for billions of years. If the danger were real, education should have taken place long ago. Donahue was reprimanded for the excitement he had also caused in the press.

The End

With the advancing purification technology it became more and more difficult to reproduce the polywater. Finally, increasingly critical voices answered, especially since the suspicion of contamination could not be adequately dispelled. In retrospect, for example, it became apparent that Zhelezhny, one of Derjagin's first employees, had secretly sent a sample of the polywater to an East German spectroscopist who found considerable contamination. When Zhelezhny pointed this out to Derjagin, Derjagin's only reaction was to have Zhelezhny's name deleted from any further publications.

The polywater debate took a turn when the chemist Denis Rousseau of Bell Labs suspected in Time magazine on October 19, 1970 that polywater was just sweat . He wrung out his shirt after a handball game, examined the substance under an infrared spectrometer and obtained the same spectral characteristics as those of Polywasser. This assumption has been published more scientifically as "biological contamination" in both Science and the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science .

One problem in polywater research from the start was that those involved feared that they would endanger a potential developmental advantage in the fight for research funding if samples were exchanged between the laboratories. Another problem was the practice of publishing as much as possible in order to make a name for oneself, which was already common at the time, which affected the quality of research. In 1970 and 1971 most of the research was carried out, but the donors gradually cut the funds, so that it is still not clear what polywater actually was or what impurities the published properties could have produced. When the criticism finally grew louder and Derjagin was forced to acknowledge the lack of reproducibility of the polywater, he withdrew his claims completely in 1973. The polywater disappeared from scientific research.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ N. Nikolai Fedyakin: Change in the Structure of Water during Condensation in Capillaries. In: Colloid Zhournal. 24, 1962, p. 497.
  2. ^ Boris V. Derjagin: Effects of Lyophile Surfaces on the Properties of Boundary Liquid Films. In: Disc. Faraday Society. 42, 1966, pp. 109-119.
  3. ↑ The "Miami Herald" of July 30, 1969 claimed that the discoverers were a team of scientists from Miami, the "Saturday Review" of September 6, 1969 tried to present Walter Patrick, an American chemist, as a "preparer".
  4. ^ FJ Donahue: Anomalous Water. In: Nature. 224, 1969, p. 198
  5. ↑ Denis L. Rousseau: 'Polywater' and Sweat: Similarities Between Infrared Spectra. In: Science. 171, 1971, pp. 170-172.
  6. ↑ Boris V. Deryagin: Nature of Anomalous Water. In: Nature. 244, 1973, pp. 430-431.

literature

  • Felix Franks: Polywasser - Fraud or Error in Science? Vieweg-Verlag, Braunschweig 1984, ISBN 3-528-08548-7 .
  • Chains in quartz . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1969, pp. 223 ( online - 30 September 1969 ).