Livermore’s Big Guns Produce Liquid Metallic Hydrogen
MAY 01, 1996
Metallic hydrogen has been a major goal for several generations of physicists. Now evidence suggests that this lightest of metals has been realized, but in an unexpected form.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2807608
The seventy‐year search for metallic hydrogen has demonstrated repeatedly that the hydrogen molecule’s simplicity is deceptive. Three generations of theorists have predicted that sufficient pressure would squeeze a crystal of hydrogen into a metallic state, perhaps exhibiting exotic phenomena. Blithely ignoring most of these predictions, hydrogen at high pressures did indeed exhibit some remarkable behaviors, but it stubbornly resisted metallization.
© 1996. American Institute of Physics
