Researchers synthesize lone hydrogen atoms in a flask for the first time

Scientists have successfully produced the lone hydrogen atom, a single electron orbiting a single proton, in a laboratory flask, overcoming a century of inaccessibility for synthetic chemists. While hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, generating the unpaired radical previously required extreme conditions, such as heating molecular hydrogen over tungsten filaments above 1,700°C, a method first used by Irving Langmuir in 1912. This new breakthrough allows the fundamental reactive species to be used as a practical tool in chemistry. The hydrogen atom, central to Niels Bohr’s atomic model and Schrödinger’s wave equation, remains the most studied system in physics but was previously out of reach for building chemical compounds.

Editor's note: Accurate coverage of the research breakthrough. The claim regarding the 1912 Langmuir method is correctly attributed to the source.