Hydrogen makes up most of the visible matter in our universe, and it had been predicted more than 80 years ago that it could be turned into metal. Now, a team of researchers from Harvard University in Cambridge (USA) has achieved this by subjecting hydrogen to a pressure much higher than what had been theorized (the calculations showed that 25 gigapascals would be enough to achieve the transition to metal).
The process works in the following way: small samples are placed between two diamonds – which by themselves are not hard enough to contend with extreme pressure – and they are tried to join. In this process, the pressure in the added substance rises (thanks to the extremely high hardness of diamonds) and the temperature is lowered to around 200-270 degrees Celsius below zero. To make hydrogen metallic, a pressure greater than that of the center of the Earth and almost 5 million times greater than that exerted on humans by the atmosphere has been required. In short: they resolved that between 465 and 495 GigaPascales is the right pressure for this great transformation.
The resulting sample became reflective , a key feature in metals. The truth is that the amount of metallic hydrogen created so far is very small, it hardly represents the cross section of a human hair, but they are convinced that, with time, they will achieve other ways to boost its production.
This scientific milestone in the conversion of hydrogen to metal (and probably capable of conducting electricity and heat) would be a revolution in the world of technology. I believe that we are not yet able to imagine the repercussions that, for example, this discovery could have in the aerospace field and in many other areas of science if they manage to make the material stable by reducing the pressure.
The study has been published in the journal Science.
