Theory suggests metallic hydrogen could be used to make zero-resistance electrical wiring and super-powerful rocket fuel, among many applications. CAMBRIDGE (CBS) – Harvard University researchers are touting a scientific breakthrough as something that could lead to “revolutionary new materials.”

Science professor Isaac Silvera and his postdoctoral fellow Ranga Dias say they’ve created metallic hydrogen for the first time. It’s the first-ever sample of metallic hydrogen on Earth, so when you’re looking at it, you’re looking at something that’s never existed before. It’s the first time that metallic hydrogen has existed on Earth Isaac Silvera, Harvard University

Modern calculations suggest metallic hydrogen could be a valuable room temperature superconductor and stable on returning to atmospheric pressure, and in its dense form also potentially useful as a rocket propellant. This is what most scientists who have evaluated the peer-reviewed paper (published in Science) have called for, worrying that the shiny material created in the anvil could just be alumina from the diamonds. State of hydrogen predicted to be a room temperature superconductor reportedly seen – but the methods used are being questioned

It has been over 80 years in the making but the metallic form of hydrogen has finally been created in the lab at extreme pressures.
Two Harvard scientists report, in the peer-reviewed journal Science, the first creation of metallic hydrogen in a laboratory, using a diamond anvil cell. Other researchers did not agree with this finding when it was first posted on the arXiv preprint server in October 2016, and have not yet changed their positions.