The sample has remained trapped in this astonishing grip, but sometime in the next few weeks, the researchers plan to carefully ease the pressure.
According to one theory, metallic hydrogen will be stable at room temperature – a prediction that Professor Silvera said was “very important”.
“That means if you take the pressure off, it will stay metallic, similar to the way diamonds form from graphite under intense heat and pressure, but remains a diamond when that pressure and heat is removed,” he said.
If this is true, then its properties a super-conductor could dramatically improve anything that uses electricity.
Some scientists aren't convinced solid hydrogen was created. We'll see...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/diamond-vise-turns-hydrogen-metal-potentially-ending-80-year-quest
Still, claims of solid metallic hydrogen have come and gone before, and some experts want more proof. "From our point of view it's not convincing," says Mikhail Eremets, who is pursuing solid metallic hydrogen at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. Others in the contentious field are downright hostile to the result. "The word garbage cannot really describe it," says Eugene Gregoryanz, a high-pressure physicist at the University of Edinburgh, who objects to several of the experiment's procedures.
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