They didn't confirm metastability. Converting it back to molecular hydrogen is trivial even if it's metastable. If it's not metastable, remove pressure. If it's

They didn't confirm metastability. Converting it back to molecular hydrogen is trivial even if it's metastable. If it's not metastable, remove pressure. If it's metastable, one just needs to wait, but the process can be sped up by heating it up. If it's metastable then we'd expect something with properties on the order of dry ice. We don't know if it's liquid or solid, but there is a pretty good chance it would be solid at room temperature[0]. It would be ridiculous to use metallic hydrogen for power lines, even if it's metastable. If it's not metastable, it's utterly ridiculous, because now we need powerlines that can hold GIGAPASCAL PRESSURES! If it's metastable, some of it will be continuously transitioning to nonmetallic, how fast this happens will depend on how metastable it is, temperature and pressure. So that less of it transitions, we are probably going to want to keep it cold and at high pressure. Our power line is probably going to resemble something like a pipeline. Oil pipelines can run at high pressures(90 bar)[1] Now if it's metastable, we need to be continuously adding new metallic hydrogen. If our hydrogen is solid, this problem is interesting. There is also the potential for some hydrogen to go non-metallic, increasing resistance, increasing heat causing more hydrogen to go non-metallic, resulting in the entire powerline exploding. [0]https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/1-diamondsinth.jpg https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire... [1]https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130412/exxons-22-foot-rupture-illustrates-tremendous-operating-pressure-oil-pipelines https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130412/exxons-22-foot-r...