Almost exactly 15 years since the Thrust supersonic car broke the sound barrier and the land speed record, last week the team behind Bloodhound SSC tested the rocket system that they hope will break that record.

The Bloodhound engine roars into life © Stefan Marjoram

Based at RAF St Mawgan in Newquay, UK, the test brought together hundreds of engineers, sponsors, media and schoolchildren. The RAF base was chosen because of its hardened air shelters (HAS), bomb-proof hangars originally designed to protect fighter planes during the cold war. This meant that those of us gathered to watch would be well-protected if the rocket exploded.

The rocket system consisted of a Cosworth Formula One engine, a pump from a 1960s Blue Steel cruise missile, 400 litres of ultra-pure hydrogen peroxide and 180kg of solid rubber rocket fuel (HTPB). You might think that a Formula One engine would be used to power the wheels, but then Bloodhound isn’t one of the ‘small, slow cars that goes round in circles’, as its driver Andy Green describes F1 cars. In Bloodhound, that powerful engine is needed just to push the peroxide into the rocket chamber at a high enough pressure.

That peroxide is fed through a silver-plated grating to break it down into oxygen and water, releasing energy and raising the temperature to 600°C. The combination of high pressure oxygen and heat ignites the rubber fuel, burning at 3000°C and unleashing up to 27,000 pounds of thrust.

There were a lot of unknowns before the test: would the pump withstand the high pressure, would the fuel burn evenly, would the chamber withstand the high temperature? In a year’s time, Andy Green will be sitting directly in front of that rocket system and the team need to be certain that the answer to those questions is a resounding ‘yes’.

We assembled 200 metres from the rocket in a neighbouring HAS to watch the test streamed live. The atmosphere was tense as we sat in complete silence while the engineers went through the final checks and the bombproof doors closed behind us. On the screen we could see the rocket chamber pointing slightly downwards, held in place by a large concrete rig. As the engine roared into life and started pumping the peroxide, we could see the flame leaving the back of the chamber as the fuel rod ignited. The engineers then unleashed the full power of the engine, pumping the peroxide at 820psi – the equivalent pressure of four family cars sitting on your palm. At this point, for a split-second, the screen turned white as the camera tried to adjust for the brightness. This was just long enough for it to appear as if the rocket had exploded. That was always a possibility and the engineers had even said beforehand that an explosion would be better than nothing happening. Happily, the camera quickly adjusted to reveal the incredibly smooth shape of the flame bursting out of the chamber. But we didn’t need the camera to know that the rocket was burning steadily, we could feel it in the ground. The quaking of the earth and deafening roar were clear signs that the engineers had got it right.

After 10 seconds, when the fuel was exhausted, the hangar erupted in applause. We had just witnessed the largest rocket test in the UK for 20 years and it was a great success. The rocket will be tested four more times over the next year, before the first record attempt in South Africa in late 2013. But the team don’t just want to break the 763mph record; they want to smash it. In 2014 they will return to South Africa and push the car to 1000mph. Keep an eye on http://www.bloodhoundssc.com to follow them every step of the way.

Ian Le Guillou

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/10/bloodhound-rocket-test-whoosh-or-bang/

This B vitamin compound is particularly important for pregnant women, but how was that importance discovered – and what has Marmite got to do with it? Find out all about folic acid in this week’s Chemistry in its element

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/10/chemistry-in-its-element-folic-acid/

Speculation over who will win this year’s chemistry Nobel prize has been feverish. Is it the turn of the biologists again (an old complaint that the lack of a biology Nobel prize means those feckless biologists have to filch our prize!) à la the 2009 prize for the structure of the ribosome? Or will it be awarded for more traditional chemistry like the 2010 prize for cross-couplings? Or it could even be another one like last year’s prize for quasicrystals that came completely out of left field and surprised a lot of people. We don’t know! But, if you want to see the predictions people have been making and even the odds for them then check our blog post. Otherwise sit back, relax and we’ll soon know who’s taken the most prestigious gong in the sciences and then the nice people on the Nobel prize committee will explain why it’s important and what it all means.

Patrick Walter

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/10/watch-the-nobel-prize-in-chemistry-live-as-its-announced/

With the Ig Nobels behind us, CW Towers now waits with bated breath for the chemistry Nobel. The prize for medicine and physiology has already been handed to John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for their work on understanding what makes a stem cell different to a mature, adult cell and how an adult cell can be transformed into a stem cell. This work could help produce a limitless supply of stem cells for therapeutic purposes without some of the ethical concerns that have dogged this promising medical technology. Supplies of stem cells are currently mostly derived from human embryos.

Today was the turn of physics. And that prize was taken by David Wineland and Serge Haroche for their work controlling quantum systems. Their research is seen as a first step on the road to creating quantum computers that would use ions or atoms as quantum bits. These quantum computers would calculate not just in ones and zeros, as conventional computers do, but have an extra state, a superposition that is both a one and a zero at the same time. This extra state, which relies on the weirdness of the way the quantum world works, holds the promise of making quantum computers vastly more powerful than any even the fastest binary supercomputer in existence.

Out of the sciences this leaves just the chemistry prize to go tomorrow morning – you can watch it live on our blog. And there are plenty of predictions out there of who’s in with a chance of taking home this prestigious gong.

Paul Bracher over at ChemBark has also put together his predictions and added a few more as he’s still smarting over not having Dan Shechtman’s quasicrystals down on his list for last year’s chemistry Nobel! He makes his predictions on a whole host of criteria, including the all-important gut feeling. Clearly he thinks it’s the biologists turn (as they don’t have their own Nobel prize) and has given nuclear hormone signalling the shortest odds.

Every year Thomson Reuters also puts together its predictions by doing some number crunching using Web of Knowledge to pick out those researchers whose work has been cited the most. One of the guys behind the Thomson Reuters picks has claimed that it has the best record of anyone at picking winners – although just not in the year they make those predictions! They’ve added gold catalysis, photocatalytic properties of titanium dioxide and quantum dots to their list for this year’s prize. Thomson’s says that after 11 years they’ve successfully predicted 26 Nobel laureates to date (although this also includes the other Nobel prizes) – we’ll have to wait and see how they do this year.

At the Curious Wavefunction, a whole host of predictions have been made, although he hasn’t put odds to them. Nuclear receptors again feature high up on the list. Other possibles include DNA fingerprinting, the synthesis of cholesterol-busting statin drugs and the discovery of chaperone proteins that help other proteins fold correctly.

There’s still time to have a flutter, so have a look through the list and make your own predictions! Who do you think will win the chemistry Nobel prize?

Patrick Walter

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/09/who-will-win-the-chemistry-nobel/

Probably best enjoyed without liquid nitrogen

Reports are coming out that an 18 year old woman has had her stomach removed after drinking a ‘nitro’ cocktail given a smoky effect using liquid nitrogen. It seems that outside of labs liquid nitrogen is proving quite the star turn… from making ice cream in Camden, to being used in cocktails around the country.

These cocktails seem to come in two types, either a small amount of liquid N₂ is used to cool the drink without dilution and with added smoky effect, or much more N₂ is used to whisk up a frozen cocktail, more N₂ is then poured over for, again, that smoky effect. Basically, everyone wants a cocktail that looks like it comes from the set of an Addams family movie.

So what happened in this instance? Well, the bar isn’t commenting and its website and Facebook page are unavailable, but the wonders of cached websites suggest that the cocktails the bar serves were of the smoking but liquid variety. That at least removes the risk of super cooled ice causing burns, but I can just imagine after a few drinks you’re not going to wait for the ‘smoke’ to disappear. Peer pressure, ‘having fun’, whether it was some super cooled ice in the drink or the liquid nitrogen itself, it sounds like a recipe for disaster and in this instance it was.

I recall, as well as having fun freezing things with left over liquid nitrogen, getting some pretty serious warnings about how to use liquid nitrogen safely – don’t touch any of the pipes, use protective gloves, never take the lift with it and instead put the container in the lift and send it off, while you take the stairs. I even saw how items dipped quickly into liquid N₂ did not freeze, because they were protected by an insulating layer of gaseous N₂ (a phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect), but how if left in contact for longer tissue could be frozen and destroyed.  I somehow doubt the risks of liquid nitrogen were spelled out to the poor woman in the same way they were to me and so, at the age of 18, she has lost her stomach.

But, to counter some of the more alarmist news reporting going on today, liquid N₂ is not toxic, it’s incredibly cold and used in a controlled manner it’s safe and can add drama to restaurant dining halls and labs alike. But I wouldn’t drive drunk, I wouldn’t go into the lab drunk and I’d not trust myself with liquid nitrogen when drunk.

Laura Howes

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/08/liquid-nitrogen-not-toxic-stomach-removed/