Almost a 100 years after it was theorized, scientists at the Harvard University claim to have succeeded in creating the rarest, and potentially one of the most valuable materials on the planet, atomic metallic hydrogen!

Besides helping scientists answer fundamental questions about the nature of matter, the material is theorized to have a wide range of applications, including as a room-temperature superconductor, and as rocket fuel because it would be tens of times lighter than existing rocket propellants as hydrogen is the lightest element!

Scientists at Harvard find a way to turn hydrogen into a metal [Photo Source]

In 1935, physicists Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington had predicted that high pressures of around 25 gigapascals (about 246,000 times atmospheric pressure) could force the normal bonds between solid hydrogen atoms to break down, but later research found that the pressure needed for this transition was even higher, around 495 gigapascal, or more than 71.7 million pounds-per-square inch, greater than the pressure at the center of the Earth.

Right now, scientists don't know much about the material's properties. The whole experimental setup is still sitting under high pressure in the lab, waiting for the next tests but the sheer magnitude of this discovery prompted Isaac Silvera, a condensed matter physicist at Harvard University, to say

No one has ever encountered metallic hydrogen because it's never existed on Earth before. Probably the conditions in the universe are such that it has never existed in the universe.

Microscopic images from the Harvard tests, and the effect of pressure on Hydrogen
[Photo Source]

And the possibilities for its application are equally exciting. If the metallic hydrogen maintains its properties even after the high pressure is removed, it's possible, it could be used to make a room-temperature superconductor, which could be helpful in producing magnetic-levitating trains, or even MRI machines, that do not require the material to be cooled to liquid helium temperatures.

But it would also revolutionize rocketry, as it is predicted to be the most powerful rocket propellant that man knows as well as the lightest, and it is also found all over the universe, though only in its gas form.

Also check this video: Making metallic hydrogen

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Once A Theory, Now Scientists Turn Hydrogen Into A Metal: Could Revolutionize Rocket Fuel & Superconductors!

Also check this video: Making metallic hydrogen