Water isn’t H2O after all. On the timescale of molecular reactions, it is really H1.5O, reports Aris Chatzidimitriou-Dreismann, a physicist at the Technical University of Berlin. He got this puzzling result when he and a group of colleagues fired neutrons at water molecules to create a high-speed snapshot of their structure. The particles did not scatter as much as expected, indicating they were hitting an unexpectedly small number of hydrogen atoms. When the researchers studied other hydrogen-based materials, about one-third of the hydrogen atoms were missing there too. “It was and is a shock, but two completely different instruments using different interactions give the same results,” Chatzidimitriou-Dreismann says.
He theorizes that over the brief time it takes molecules to interact—about 100 quintillionths of a second—quantum effects come into play. “The notion of a single pointlike nucleus disappears, and it becomes a wave, like an electron. Then strange things happen,” Chatzidimitriou-Dreismann ...
