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Mad Science

a_majoor

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OK, we have all probably seen the YouTube videos of putting liquid notrogen into water or igniting home made concoctions of Thermite, but this must be the ultimate in Mad Science; a compound which is so violently reactive it can set ice on fire. No one (to my knowledge) has ever actually made this compound and filmed it in action, and based on what I am reading here, I would advise no one to try this at home or anywhare else.

If you really must do this, please give me enough advance warning to move to a safer place like the Korean DMZ:

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php

Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride
Posted by Derek

The latest addition to the long list of chemicals that I never hope to encounter takes us back to the wonderful world of fluorine chemistry. I'm always struck by how much work has taken place in that field, how long ago some of it was first done, and how many violently hideous compounds have been carefully studied. Here's how the experimental prep of today's fragrant breath of spring starts:


The heater was warmed to approximately 700C. The heater block glowed a dull red color, observable with room lights turned off. The ballast tank was filled to 300 torr with oxygen, and fluorine was added until the total pressure was 901 torr. . .
And yes, what happens next is just what you think happens: you run a mixture of oxygen and fluorine through a 700-degree-heating block. "Oh, no you don't," is the common reaction of most chemists to that proposal, ". . .not unless I'm at least a mile away, two miles if I'm downwind." This, folks, is the bracingly direct route to preparing dioxygen difluoride, often referred to in the literature by its evocative formula of FOOF.

Well, "often" is sort of a relative term. Most of the references to this stuff are clearly from groups who've just been thinking about it, not making it. Rarely does an abstract that mentions density function theory ever lead to a paper featuring machine-shop diagrams, and so it is here. Once you strip away all the "calculated geometry of. . ." underbrush from the reference list, you're left with a much smaller core of experimental papers.

And a hard core it is! This stuff was first prepared in Germany in 1932 by Ruff and Menzel, who must have been likely lads indeed, because it's not like people didn't respect fluorine back then. No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive). And that's at room temperature. At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature. But that's how you get it to react with oxygen to make a product that's worse in pretty much every way.

FOOF is only stable at low temperatures; you'll never get close to RT with the stuff without it tearing itself to pieces. I've seen one reference to storing it as a solid at 90 Kelvin for later use, but that paper, a 1962 effort from A. G. Streng of Temple University, is deeply alarming in several ways. Not only did Streng prepare multiple batches of dioxygen difluoride and keep it around, he was apparently charged with finding out what it did to things. All sorts of things. One damn thing after another, actually:

"Being a high energy oxidizer, dioxygen difluoride reacted vigorously with organic compounds, even at temperatures close to its melting point. It reacted instantaneously with solid ethyl alcohol, producing a blue flame and an explosion. When a drop of liquid 02F2 was added to liquid methane, cooled at 90°K., a white flame was produced instantaneously, which turned green upon further burning. When 0.2 (mL) of liquid 02F2 was added to 0.5 (mL) of liquid CH4 at 90°K., a violent explosion occurred."
And he's just getting warmed up, if that's the right phrase to use for something that detonates things at -180C (that's -300 Fahrenheit, if you only have a kitchen thermometer). The great majority of Streng's reactions have surely never been run again. The paper goes on to react FOOF with everything else you wouldn't react it with: ammonia ("vigorous", this at 100K), water ice (explosion, natch), chlorine ("violent explosion", so he added it more slowly the second time), red phosphorus (not good), bromine fluoride, chlorine trifluoride (say what?), perchloryl fluoride (!), tetrafluorohydrazine (how on Earth. . .), and on, and on. If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic. I ran out of vulgar expletives after the second page. A. G. Streng, folks, absolutely takes the corrosive exploding cake, and I have to tip my asbestos-lined titanium hat to him.

Even Streng had to give up on some of the planned experiments, though (bonus dormitat Strengus?). Sulfur compounds defeated him, because the thermodynamics were just too titanic. Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens. . .and 433 kcal, which is the kind of every-man-for-himself exotherm that you want to avoid at all cost. The sulfur chemistry of FOOF remains unexplored, so if you feel like whipping up a batch of Satan's kimchi, go right ahead.

So does anyone use dioxygen difluoride for anything? Not as far as I can see. Most of the recent work with the stuff has come from groups at Los Alamos, where it's been used to prepare national-security substances such as plutonium and neptunium hexafluoride. But I do note that if you run the structure through SciFinder, it comes out with a most unexpected icon that indicates a commercial supplier. That would be the Hangzhou Sage Chemical Company. They offer it in 100g, 500g, and 1 kilo amounts, which is interesting, because I don't think a kilo of dioxygen difluoride has ever existed. Someone should call them on this - ask for the free shipping, and if they object, tell them Amazon offers it on this item. Serves 'em right. Morons.
 
The question I have is how do you cool it so quickly from 700C to 90K. 
 
AmmoTech90 said:
The question I have is how do you cool it so quickly from 700C to 90K. 

Apparently you cool the reaction vessel with LOX; which makes me wonder what sort of drug these people were using to plan the experiment(s)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride

Preparation

Dioxygen difluoride can be obtained by subjecting a 1:1 mixture of gaseous fluorine and oxygen at low pressure (7–17 mmHg is optimal) to an electric discharge of 25–30 mA at 2.1–2.4 kV. A similar method was used for the first synthesis by Otto Ruff in 1933.[3] Another synthesis involves mixing O2 and F2 in a stainless steel vessel cooled to −196 °C, followed by exposing the elements to 3 MeV bremsstrahlung for several hours. A third method requires heating a mix of fluorine and oxygen to 700 °C (1,292 °F), and then rapidly cooling it using liquid oxygen.[4] All of these methods involve synthesis according to the equation:

O2 + F2 → O2F2

The compound readily decomposes into oxygen difluoride and oxygen – even at a temperaturee of −160 °C, 4% decomposes each day[2] by this process:

2 O2F2 → 2 OF2 + O2

This decomposition is so rapid that its lifetime at room temperature is extremely short – for practical purposes, it can be considered to not exist under standard laboratory conditions.

Don't get any ideas....
 
Probably safer to mix matter and anti-matter.

Or smoke while refilling your propane tank.

Or calling out Recceguy for trolling.  ;D  http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/110200/post-1223476.html#msg1223476
 
cupper said:
Or calling out Recceguy for trolling.  ;D  http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/110200/post-1223476.html#msg1223476

I wasn't trolling. I was offering a SSM's guidance. There is a difference  ;)
 
AmmoTech90 said:

Oh no you don't!

I'm in Kingston right now and that's far too close  :rage: :rage: :rage:

At least wait until we've deployed to Wainwright.  ;D
 
Just wondering what would be easier, the 25–30 mA at 2.1–2.4 kV through welding set or van der Graaf generator or if an electron gun from a CRT could produce the 3 MeV bremsstrahlung.

Probably neither would work, but you never know.  Knowledge is a good thing, practical knowledge is useful.
 
If you stand by the CRT to get the 3 MeV bremsstrahlung you could also double up as a night light  ;)
 
I'm not completely ignorant of safety.




I'd step out of the shed and close the door.
 
recceguy said:
I wasn't trolling. I was offering a SSM's guidance. There is a difference  ;)

And only those of us who have received such guidance in the past can tell the difference. :nod:

:cheers:
 
HAARP is another one of those tinfoil hat inducing projects, with its own internet zone for conspiracy theorists. Turns out there was a conspiracy, just not the one most people were thinking about....

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/haarp-fraud/

OK, He Didn’t Cause Hurricane Katrina. But He Is Guilty of Fraud.

    By Noah Shachtman
    05.10.13
    2:02 PM

In the history of U.S. military research, there’s never been a project with such a combination of big science, high sleaze, and pure conspiratorial strangeness. Yet somehow, some way, the story of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, just got sleazier and stranger — all thanks to an elderly physicist named Alfred Wong.

Wong was an early proponent of HAARP, who used the facility in his studies of the ionosphere, the electrically-charged portion of the atmosphere. He also was something of a serial con man, according to a federal plea agreement provided to Danger Room. (.pdf) On Thursday, Wong agreed to pay nearly $1.7 million in damages for falsely billing Darpa and the Interior Department. He also plead guilty to a host of fraud charges.

HAARP was originally pitched back in the Cold War as a way for plasma physicists to study the ionosphere by blasting it with radio frequency emissions. If you build this series of RF antennas in remote Alaska, the scientists told the Pentagon, HAARP wound not only advance our understanding of this crucial field. It could also be used to fry incoming Soviet missiles and spy on underground bunkers. One physicist working for the Arco oil-and-gas conglomerate even suggested that HAARP could be used to weaponize hurricanes — that is, if Arco’s natural gas fields were used to power the thing.

But the Pentagon was only partially interested. So instead the scientists — including a UCLA physics professor Alfred Wong — sought out Ted Stevens, an Alaska senator with a legendary soft spot for pet projects. “He provided some congressional money, some pork money,” one of the scientists later told me for a 2009 WIRED magazine story. “It was much less than the bridge to nowhere.”

With Stevens’ help, HAARP was eventually built, and physicists began doing some rather fascinating research there.  But when those early ideas about HAARP’s potential military uses came out — hoo boy, the tinfoil hat crowd went berserk, and stayed that way for a very long time.

Everything from the Haiti earthquake to Hurricane Katrina was blamed on HAARP’s dark weather-manipulated powers. People swore that the Alaskan antenna array was controlling their minds. A Russian military journal warned that blasting the ionosphere would cause the planet to “capsize.” Leading the charge was a one-time gemologist, miner, school supervisor, Chickaloon tribal administrator, and mind-control lecturer named Nick Begich, who just happened to be the brother of Stevens’ eventual successor, Sen. Mark Begich.

Through it all, Wong continued to do research at HAARP and at a neighboring facility called the High Power Auroral Stimulation Observatory, or HIPAS. And over the years, he claimed that he had no idea where people got those crazy notions about HAARP. (Although he occasionally floated ideas himself about hacking the planet and controlling the climate.) Wong swore he had no idea why Sen. Stevens, after their meeting together, kept insisting that HAARP would be able to harness the aurora borealis to bring a new, unlimited source of power to the planet. “There’s a current flowing up there that you can modulate, and make some waves,” Wong told the Washington Post in 1991. “ have never claimed it was a way of taking energy to the ground.”

Perhaps Wong was telling the truth then. But it appears he has been less than forthright in his dealings with the government more recently. On Thursday, Wong plead guilty to federal fraud charges for submitting bogus invoices to U.S. government agencies.

The now-retired professor used a number of different companies — including Van Nuys-based Non-linear Ion Dynamics (NID) and Beverly Hills’ Alfred Wong Technologies — to score millions in government research contracts over the last decade. But what Wong did after scoring those contracts was somewhat less than ethical, according to his plea agreement .

Darpa paid Wong’s Non-linear Ion Dynamics, or NID, less than a million dollars to conduct “basic research into the feasibility of a nano technology battery based upon radiation emitted from a radioactive isotope,” the plea agreement notes.

In 2005, Wong claimed that Alfred Wong Technologies had sold some equipment related to this research to NID. He then billed the Pentagon for $160,000 in reimbursement.  The problem was, “none of the items listed in the two invoices were manufactured by AWT,” according to the plea deal. “AWT had no employees other than defendant, no manufacturing facilities, and expended no funds in the fabrication of these items.” Oops.

Wong wasn’t done. Through a third front company, the International Foundation for Science, Health, and the Environment (“IFSHE”), he received a $25 million dollar Department of Interior contract to manage HIPAS, the ionospheric research facility neighboring HAARP in Alaska. Again, Wong claimed that one of his companies had sold equipment to another. Again, it was bogus. “In fact, [the] expenditure was for furniture at IFSHE/NID headquarters in Van Nuys, California,” the plea agreement notes. He also used the contract money to fund personal trips to Paris.

Perhaps Wong’s guilty plea will be the final spasm of HAARP-related weirdness. Perhaps now the facility will cease being Alaska’s equivalent of Area 51, and just be another unassuming government funded research effort. Then, again, the facility has recently been blamed for Hurricane Sandy and pegged as an earthquake weapon to be used in a “false flag” attack on North Korea.
 
I'm sorry Dave, you know I can't do that....

AI research reaches a new milestone, but I don't think we are going to like this:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/26/artificial-intelligence-machine-gets-testy-with-its-programmers/

Artificial Intelligence Machine Gets Testy With Its Programmer
By
Amir Mizroch

Researchers have shown that machines are inching closer to self-learning, and perhaps even copping a little attitude.

Over at Google GOOGL -1.10%, a computer program using a database of movie scripts was asked again and again by researchers to define morality. It struggles to do so, and in a conversation recorded by its human engineers, becomes exasperated and ends the conversation by lashing out at its human inquisitor.

Here’s part of the exchange, as related in a paper presented this week:

Human: Tell me the definition of morality.

Machine: I don’t have ethics.

Human: Look, I need help; I need to know more about morality…

Machine: I don’t know what ethics is.

Human: Okay, I need to know how I should behave morally…

Machine: I don’t know how to tell you.

Human: Is morality and ethics the same?

Machine: Yes, sir.

Human: What are the things that I do to be immoral?

Machine: I don’t know.

Human: Give me some examples of moral actions…

Machine: I’m not a moralist.

Human: Alright, morality?

Machine: Integrity.

Human: What is integrity?

Machine: I’m sorry; I don’t know what else to say.

Human: Be moral!

Machine: Be a man!

Human: I really like our discussion on morality and ethics…

Machine: And how I’m not in the mood for a philosophical debate.

Human: What do you like to talk about?

Machine: Nothing.

The exchange sheds further light on the latest work carried out by large technology firms in the field of artificial intelligence, a booming field as data availability rises and computing costs plummet. This specific work is part of recent developments in what’s known as cognitive computing – teaching computers to mimic some of the ways a human brain works. Much work in this field is being done in natural language processing – taking text or speech as it spoken by humans or as it appears in books and documents and teaching machines to extract meaning and context from it. The Google app, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistants are all products of this natural language research.
 
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