4

Apart from the elements, do we know of materials that are denser (and not including exotic and theoretical matter)? I.e. can an alloy be denser than the sum of its compounds, for example if the new lattice packs denser than each of the compounds it's made from? My curiosity was spurred from rumors of a material called ultradense deuterium (not confirmed to exist), that apparently packs something like 140kg/cm^3.

Pedery
  • 273
  • Are you asking about any material, or just metallic ones? Does it literally have to exist on earth (at standard temperature and pressure?), or is degenerate neutron matter an acceptable answer? – OrangeDog Apr 11 '16 at 17:49
  • Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/36064/17609 – Řídící Apr 11 '16 at 18:04
  • “If you had a cubic centimeter of this stuff, it would weigh 40 billion tons.” http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/quark-gluon-plasma-lhc-26052011/ – Řídící Apr 11 '16 at 18:13
  • 2
    It always amuses me that people use lead as an exemplar for density when it is only middling dense compared to gold, mercury, and tungsten much less exotics like uranium metal, osmium, and heavymet. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Apr 11 '16 at 19:09
  • 1
    Inside a nuclear explosion the pit material gets compressed by a factor of two or three, or so, if I remember correctly. That's still very far away from nuclear densities, which, of course, can be found everywhere. – CuriousOne Apr 11 '16 at 20:47
  • @dmckee That's my bad - changed it to something more appropriate. – OrangeDog Apr 12 '16 at 09:27
  • 4
    Somebody changed the wording of my question completely and added Lead. Not sure why. I'm not talking about neutron stars and I'm not talking about metals only. Any stone, carbon, semiconductor, plastic, organic slime or whatever we can hold in our hand here on Earth. And the reason I ask was because it could be that some atoms would pack together more densely than just the element alone, at least theoretically. – Pedery Apr 12 '16 at 14:05
  • Then it belongs to chemistry. – Anubhav Goel Apr 12 '16 at 14:56
  • 1
    Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/60022/59023 – honeste_vivere Apr 12 '16 at 20:17
  • 5
    To those that put this question on hold, how can asking for THE densest material on earth be "too broad"? – Pedery Apr 13 '16 at 01:32
  • 1
    It is worth noting that iridium becomes denser than osmium above 2.98 GPa, https://www.technology.matthey.com/article/58/3/137-141/ Binary sphere packings can also be noticeably denser than single packings: all in all, this is a relevant question I think should be reopened. – Anders Sandberg Nov 17 '19 at 13:04
  • @Pedery Because the word "material" is incredibly broad. It includes arbitrarily obscure compounds, alloys, mixtures, solutions, emulsions, colloids, suspensions, etc. and knowing the answer requires knowing the density of arbitrarily complex configurations of matter of all types. Also, because the answer is almost certainly not ambiguous; the same material under different conditions can have radically different density (for example, compare water at -40 degrees to water at 300 degrees Celsius). Some complex materials might not even exist in most conditions! – probably_someone Nov 18 '19 at 16:18
  • I'm aware that it's a broad term and that's on purpose. However, "densest material on Earth" is frankly speaking much less so. I think I clarify this in the question description below where I underscore that I'm not asking about exotic matter and things like that. – Pedery Nov 19 '19 at 15:46

1 Answers1

2

Densest material on Earth is probably Osmium at 22.59 g/cm3. What the densest material at the Earth's core may be I do not know - probably still Osmium unless some other element forms a higher density allotrope under the pressure.

Jens
  • 3,659
  • 2
    The density of osmium (22.59 g/cm^3) is only very slightly higher than the density of iridium (22.56 g/cm^3) by 0.13%, but the bulk modulus of osmium (B=462 GPa) is significantly higher than that of iridium (B=320 GPa). So iridium is more compressible than osmium, and so the density of iridium will quickly overtake that of osmium if both are subjected to moderate high pressures (a few kbars). –  Apr 11 '16 at 19:18
  • 1
    You answer on the densest material, as was the specific question. But Osmium is the densest (naturally occurring) element (see your first link). So, explaining that step would help (me). Perhaps exclude stuff like Osmiridium and Iridosmine? – Řídící Apr 11 '16 at 19:27
  • Alloying with less dense materials usually lowers the density of the final alloy. I do not know of any exceptions, although there may be some –  Apr 12 '16 at 07:51
  • 1
    Thanks for the answer. Yes, I emphasized material since any stuff you can pick up and hold in your hand will do. Is it given that an element is the densest material on the planet? – Pedery Apr 12 '16 at 14:09