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High-pressure physics

Piling on the pressure

Nature volume 511, pages 294–295 (2014)Cite this article

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The machine that houses the world's largest laser, and which stands in for the starship Enterprise's warp core in the film Star Trek Into Darkness, has compressed diamond to the density of lead. See Letter p.330

The stars and planets we can see in the night sky were formed by strong gravitational forces that crushed their constituent atoms tightly together at immense pressures. How, on Earth, can we figure out what effect this force has had on the inside of these distant and inaccessible objects? We are confident about the physics that operates in these stars and planets, but what about their chemistry? Predictions abound, but hard experimental data are desperately needed. On page 330 of this issue, Smith et al.1 present the results of groundbreaking experiments on the compression of carbon diamond up to a pressure similar to that at the centre of Saturn.

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Figure 1: The National Ignition Facility machine.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chris J. Pickard is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK, and at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences.,

    Chris J. Pickard

  2. Richard J. Needs is in the Theory of Condensed Matter Group, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK.,

    Richard J. Needs

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  1. Chris J. Pickard
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  2. Richard J. Needs
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Correspondence to Chris J. Pickard.

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Pickard, C., Needs, R. Piling on the pressure. Nature 511, 294–295 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/511294a

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