It’s Superman’s only weak point and it’s called kryptonite. Now, a team of scientists from the Polish Academy of Sciences has discovered how to synthesize an oxide of krypton, the first binary compound of krypton and oxygen. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Krypton, like argon, neon or xenon, is a noble gas and despite being lethal to Superman and his peers in the comics, on Earth this chemical element (with atomic number 36) is harmless, odorless and colorless . From this “invisibility” comes its name, because “kryptos”, means hidden in Greek and was baptized as such in 1898 by William Ramsay.
The finding of this study is that chemicals have discovered how to produce krypton oxide using extremely high pressure (300 to 500 million atmospheres), something feasible with current technology using a diamond anvil cell. Taking into account that there are some 15,000 million tons of this exotic substance , the synthesis of a new crystalline material in which the krypton atoms would be chemically bound to another element could become quite an achievement.
Computer simulations suggest that krypton monoxide crystals could form, but at the moment, the compound has not yet been produced.
“The substance we are predicting is a krypton compound with oxygen, not nitrogen. In comic book convention it should therefore be called ‘kryptoxide’ not ‘kryptonite’ . So if Superman reads this, he can stay calm: at the moment, there is no reason to panic, ”says Patrick Zaleski-Ejgierd, leader of the work, humorously.
