Scientists have revealed an entirely new state of matter: phase V hydrogen.

January 9th, 2016

Awake Goy

By crushing Earth’s lightest element with mind-boggling pressures, scientists have revealed an entirely new state of matter: phase V hydrogen.

The squished hydrogen is a precursor to a state of matter first proposed in the 1930s, called atomic solid metallic hydrogen. When cooled to low enough temperatures, hydrogen (which on Earth is usually found as a gas) can become a solid; at high enough pressures, when the element solidifies, it turns into a metal. Planetary scientists think the interior of Jupiter is largely made of the stuff.

And so, in crushing hydrogen at such high pressures, the physicists also got a glimpse of the inner atmosphere of a gas giant, where pressures reach millions of (Earth) atmospheres. [Elementary, My Dear: 8 Elements You’ve Never Heard Of]

Crushing hydrogen

At the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, doctoral student Philip Dalladay-Simpson and his colleagues Ross Howie and Eugene Gregoryanz put a small amount of hydrogen between two diamond anvils, and dialed up the pressure to 384 gigapascals, or 55 million pounds per square inch (psi). By comparison, Earth’s atmosphere is 100 kilopascals, or 15 pounds per square inch, at sea level. On Jupiter, the weight of the atmosphere hits 29 million psi at about 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) below the cloud tops, and models suggest that’s where hydrogen may take the form of a liquid metal.