With gentle pulses from gigantic lasers, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California transformed hydrogen into droplets of shiny liquid metal.
Their research, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, could improve understanding of giant gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn whose interiors are believed to be awash with liquid metallic hydrogen.
The findings could also help settle some fractious debates over the physics of the lightest and most abundant element in the universe.
At the temperatures and pressures found at the surface of Earth, hydrogen atoms pair up in molecules and bounce around as a colorless gas.
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