Pair claim they have turned hydrogen to metal
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 08:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- Many have tried, but none have succeeded. For at least a hundred years, scientists looking at hydrogen have scratched their chins when musing over the fact that it, as an alkali metal, by all rights should exist as a metal under the right circumstances. But thus far, no one has been able to figure out what the right circumstances might be. Until now. Maybe. Mikhail Eremets and Ivan Troyan of the Max-Planck Institute describe in their paper published in Nature Materials, how they subjected a sample of hydrogen to high pressure and low temperature and found it then demonstrated properties generally ascribed to a metal.