Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe; scientists have been trying all sorts of techniques to produce metallic hydrogen for decades.
Now, a team of French scientists from Harvard University has claimed to finally create metallic hydrogen in a laboratory setting.
Metallic hydrogen could be used as semiconductors or rocket fuel
According to scientists it is a revolutionary achievement, as metallic hydrogen could be a groundbreaking superconductor and it could revolutionize electronics. Scientists hope that it could be used in many fields from our electrical grid to hospital MRI machines. It will even help scientists understand how planets like Jupiter formed.
How scientists converted hydrogen gas in to metal
To convert hydrogen gas into metal, hydrogen was subjected to a pressure around 425 billion Pascals in a high-pressure test chamber. This pressure is equivalent to around 4.2 million times more pressure than is exerted by the Earth’s atmosphere.
Argonne National Lab physicist Maddury Somayazulu said, “I think this is really a Nobel-prize worthy discovery,” “It always was, but this probably represents one of the cleanest and most comprehensive pieces of work on pure hydrogen.”
