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Thanks for your answer. I'm really curious how practical metallic hydrogen it. >How would you continuously crush hydrogen with that? Why do you the crush to b

• dschuetz 8y ago
  Applying continuous pressure on solid hydrogen is equivalent to keeping the ice cool to prevent melting. On earth, I suppose, solid hydrogen would melt, boil and slowly evaporate without external pressure, if not furiously explode when mixing with oxygen. The better questions are, does it take less pressure to keep hydrogen solid than continuously and literally crushing it? Besides that, how do you keep solid hydrogen under pressure from all directions at once?
• cerealbad 8y ago
  metallic hydrogen is believed to be metastable, predicted to remain a solid down to 20-40GPa (60-120T). there are two main hypothetical uses for it: a solid rocket fuel (with a x4 increase in specific impulse) and a superconducting wire with zero transmission loss across long distances (making solar farms in remote places attractive). there may also be military applications eg. hypersonic thermobaric weapon delivery systems. the other replies in this thread are more realistic. the experiment is likely to study what happens to atoms in high magnetic fields, electrons for example start to pool together in strange ways. as with most scientific research, useful applications are often beyond the horizon and emerge from serendipitous discovery.