A deposit of nearly pure argon left undisturbed since Earth's formation is about to help physicists understand more about the universe.
General Physics
Apr 26, 2022
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On the massive sheets of ice that stretch across Greenland and Antarctica, the temperature is so low that not even the summer sun can melt the snow deposited onto them. As the snow accumulates without melting and settles ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 30, 2022
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Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used high power impulse magnetron scattering (HiPIMS) to create thin films of tungsten with unprecedentedly low levels of film stress. By optimizing the timing of a substrate ...
Nanophysics
Jul 05, 2021
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A century ago, physicists didn't know about the existence of neutrinos, the most abundant, elusive and ethereal subatomic particles of matter in the universe.
General Physics
Mar 05, 2021
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The COHERENT particle physics experiment at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has firmly established the existence of a new kind of neutrino interaction. Because neutrinos are electrically neutral and ...
General Physics
Jan 26, 2021
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The international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE, hosted by Fermilab, will be huge. In fact, with more than 1,000 collaborators from over 30 countries and five continents, it's the largest international science ...
General Physics
Sep 21, 2020
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A test firing of Europe's Helicon Plasma Thruster, developed with ESA by SENER and the Universidad Carlos III's Plasma & Space Propulsion Team (EP2-UC3M) in Spain. This compact, electrodeless and low voltage design is ideal ...
Space Exploration
Sep 07, 2020
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Yale geophysicists reported that Earth's ever-shifting, underground network of tectonic plates was firmly in place more than 4 billion years ago—at least a billion years earlier than scientists generally thought.
Earth Sciences
May 27, 2020
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How do you detect a particle that has almost no mass, feels only two of the four fundamental forces, and can travel unhindered through solid lead for an entire light-year without ever interacting with matter? This is the ...
General Physics
Apr 10, 2020
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Scientists working at CERN have started tests of a new neutrino detector prototype, using a very promising technology called "dual phase." If successful, this new technology will be used at a much larger scale for the international ...
General Physics
Oct 10, 2019
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Argon /ˈɑrɡɒn/ is a chemical element represented by the symbol Ar. Argon has atomic number 18 and is the third element in group 18 of the periodic table (noble gases). Argon is the third most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere, at 0.93%, making it more common than carbon dioxide. Nearly all of this argon is radiogenic argon-40 derived from the decay of potassium-40 in the Earth's crust. In the universe, argon-36 is by far the most common argon isotope, being the preferred argon isotope produced by stellar nucleosynthesis in supernovas.
The name "argon" is derived from the Greek word αργον meaning "lazy" or "the inactive one", a reference to the fact that the element undergoes almost no chemical reactions. The complete octet (eight electrons) in the outer atomic shell makes argon stable and resistant to bonding with other elements. Its triple point temperature of 83.8058 K is a defining fixed point in the International Temperature Scale of 1990.
Argon is produced industrially by the fractional distillation of liquid air. Argon is mostly used as an inert shielding gas in welding and other high-temperature industrial processes where ordinarily non-reactive substances become reactive; for example, an argon atmosphere is used in graphite electric furnaces to prevent the graphite from burning. Argon gas also has uses in incandescent and fluorescent lighting, and other types of gas discharge tubes. Argon makes a distinctive blue-green gas laser.
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