World’s largest laser reveals extreme conditions inside solar system’s giant planets

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Inside these giant planets, the hydrogen gas that forms a key part of their structure is subjected to pressures and temperatures 6 million times higher than Earth’s atmosphere. They found that the transition from transparent to opaque material took place as the hydrogen was squeezed under about 1.5 million times normal atmospheric pressure, and the metallic state arrived as this came closer to 2 million times. “To build better models of potential exoplanetary architecture, this transition between gas and metallic liquid hydrogen must be demonstrated and understood,” explained Dr Alexander Goncharov from the Carnegie Institution for Science. The ultimate goal of the National Ignition Facility, where the research took place, is to use lasers to compress hydrogen fuel with the goal of inducing nuclear fusion reactions.