Matter at Extreme States Stories
Matter at Extreme States
Student Carolyn Beaumont Working at the Geophysical Lab Won 5th in Regeneron Science Talent Search
Carolyn Beaumont, a senior at the Potomac School in McLean VA, won 5th place in the 78th Regeneron Science Talent...
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Matter at Extreme States
Venture Grant Awarded to Dionysis Foustoukos and Sue Rhee
A new Venture Grant has been awarded to the Geophysical Laboratory’s Dionysis Foustoukos and Sue Rhee of the Department of Plant Biology, with colleague Costantino Vetriani of Rutgers...
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Matter at Extreme States
Unraveling the properties of fluid metallic hydrogen could help scientists unlock the mysteries of Jupiter’s formation and internal structure. Credit: Mark Meamber, LLNL.
Under pressure, hydrogen offers a reflection of giant planet interiors
Washington, DC—Lab-based mimicry allowed an international team of physicists including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov to probe hydrogen under the conditions found in the interiors of...
Explore this Story
Matter at Extreme States
Nitrogen is the dominant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, where it is most-commonly bonded with itself in diatomic N2 molecules. New work indicate that it becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep insi
Intense conditions turn nitrogen metallic
Washington, DC—New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov confirms that nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to...
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Matter at Extreme States
Venkata Srinu Bhadram Receives Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award
Washington, D.C.--Venkata Srinu Bhadram in Timothy Strobel’s lab at the Geophysical Laboratory (GL) will receive the ninth Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award (PIE). These awards are...
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Matter at Extreme States
Michael Walter Begins Tenure as Geophysical Laboratory Director
Washington, DC—Interim Co-Presidents John Mulchaey and Yixian Zheng are thrilled to welcome experimental petrologist Michael Walter as the new Director of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory...
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Matter at Extreme States
Carnegie Science, Carnegie Institution, Carnegie Institution for Science, Timothy Strobel
Molecular prison forces diatomic inmates to cell floor
Washington, DC—A team of scientists including Carnegie’s Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram now report unexpected quantum behavior of hydrogen molecules, H2, trapped within tiny cages made...
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Matter at Extreme States
Carnegie Science, Carnegie Institution, Carnegie Institution for Science, Alexander Goncharov, Hanyu Liu, Elissaios Stavrou, Sergey Lobanov, Yansun Yao, Joseph Zaug, Eran Greenberg, Vitali Prakapenka
Do you know where your xenon is? Maybe it’s hanging out with iron and nickel in the Earth’s core
Washington, DC—The paradox of the missing xenon might sound like the title of the latest airport thriller, but it’s actually a problem that’s stumped geophysicists for decades. New...
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High Pressure Diamond Project
The Geophysical Laboratory has made important advances in the growth of diamond by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).  Methods have been developed to produce single-crystal diamond at low pressure having a broad range of properties.
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Meet Carnegie Scientists
Yingwei Fei
Scientists simulate the high pressures and temperatures of planetary interiors to measure their physical properties. Yingwei Fei studies the composition and structure of planetary interiors with high-pressure instrumentation including the multianvil apparatus, the piston cylinder, and the diamond...
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Anat Shahar
Anat Shahar is pioneering a field that blends isotope geochemistry with high-pressure experiments to examine planetary cores and the Solar System’s formation, prior to planet formation, and how the planets formed and differentiated. Stable isotope geochemistry is the study of how physical and...
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Michael Walter - Director
Experimental petrologist Michael Walter became director of the Geophysical Laboratory beginning April 1, 2018. His recent research has focused on the period early in Earth’s history, shortly after the planet accreted from the cloud of gas and dust surrounding our young Sun, when the...
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Will room-temperature superconductors become an everyday reality?
Washington, D.C.—Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in...
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Melting Solid Below the Freezing Point
Washington, D.C.--Phase transitions surround us—for instance, liquid water changes to ice when frozen and to steam when boiled. Now, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science* have...
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How can we use new states of matter?
Tiny cages hold big promise. Understanding the chemical reactions that can create tiny molecular cages that hold other “guest” molecules—structures called clathrates—is key to creating a new...
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Explore Carnegie Science

Student Carolyn Beaumont Working at the Geophysical Lab Won 5th in Regeneron Science Talent Search
March 13, 2019

Carolyn Beaumont, a senior at the Potomac School in McLean VA, won 5th place in the 78th Regeneron Science Talent Search. During the summer of 2018, she worked with Geophysical Laboratory staff members George Cody and Bjorn Mysen on a project to shed light on the molecular details of how water interacts with silicate melts. During her time, she learned how to run all aspects of the experiment, including how to operate a piston cylinder pressure apparatus that generates pressures on the order of 1.5 GPa and temperatures in excess of 1400°C. She also used molecular spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, to obtain detailed

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Venture Grant Awarded to Dionysis Foustoukos and Sue Rhee
September 20, 2018

A new Venture Grant has been awarded to the Geophysical Laboratory’s Dionysis Foustoukos and Sue Rhee of the Department of Plant Biology, with colleague Costantino Vetriani of Rutgers University for their project Deciphering Life Functions in Extreme Environments.

Carnegie Science Venture Grants ignore conventional boundaries and bring together cross-disciplinary researchers with fresh eyes to explore different questions. Each grant provides $100,000 support for two years with the hope for surprising outcomes. The grants are generously supported, in part, by trustee Michael Wilson and his wife Jane and by the Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Deep sea hydrothermal vents

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Unraveling the properties of fluid metallic hydrogen could help scientists unlock the mysteries of Jupiter’s formation and internal structure. Credit: Mark Meamber, LLNL.
Under pressure, hydrogen offers a reflection of giant planet interiors
August 15, 2018

Washington, DC—Lab-based mimicry allowed an international team of physicists including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov to probe hydrogen under the conditions found in the interiors of giant planets—where experts believe it gets squeezed until it becomes a liquid metal, capable of conducting electricity. Their work is published in Science.

Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the universe and the simplest—comprised of only a one proton and one electron in each atom. But that simplicity is deceptive, because there is still so much to learn about it, including its behavior under conditions not found on Earth.

For example, although hydrogen on the

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Nitrogen is the dominant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, where it is most-commonly bonded with itself in diatomic N2 molecules. New work indicate that it becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep insi
Intense conditions turn nitrogen metallic
July 9, 2018

Washington, DC—New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov confirms that nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Their findings are published by Nature Communications.

Nitrogen is one of the most-common elements in the universe and is crucial to life on Earth. In living organisms, it is a key part of the makeup of both the nucleic acids that form genetic material and the amino acids that make up proteins. It comprises nearly 80 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere.

But what about how nitrogen

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High Pressure Diamond Project

The Geophysical Laboratory has made important advances in the growth of diamond by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).  Methods have been developed to produce single-crystal diamond at low pressure having a broad range of properties.
Read Full Story

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Ronald Cohen

Ronald Cohen primarily studies materials through first principles research—computational methods that begin with the most fundamental properties of a system, such as the nuclear charges of atoms, and then calculate what happens to a material under different conditions, such as pressure and temperature. He particularly focuses on properties of materials under extreme conditions such as high pressure and high temperature. This research applies to various topics and problems in geophysics and technological materials.

Some of his work focuses on understanding the behavior of high-technology materials called ferroelectrics—non-conducting crystals with an electric dipole

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Alexander Goncharov

Alexander F. Goncharov's analyzes materials under extreme conditions such as high pressure and temperature using optical spectroscopy and other techniques to understand how matter fundamentally changes, the chemical processes occurring deep within planets, including Earth, and to understand and develop new materials with potential applications to energy.

In one area Goncharov is pursuing the holy grail of materials science, whether hydrogen can exist in an electrically conducting  metallic state as predicted by theory. He is also interested in understanding the different phases materials undergo as they transition under different pressure and temperature conditions to

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Sally June Tracy

Sally June Tracy applies cutting-edge experimental and analytical techniques to understand the fundamental physical behavior of materials at extreme conditions. She uses dynamic compression techniques with high-flux X-ray sources to probe the structural changes and phase transitions in materials at conditions that mimic impacts and the interiors of terrestrial and exoplanets. She is also an expert in nuclear resonant scattering and synchrotron X-ray diffraction. She uses these techniques to understand novel behavior at the electronic level.  Tracy received her Ph.D. from the California Institute of

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Yingwei Fei

Scientists simulate the high pressures and temperatures of planetary interiors to measure their physical properties. Yingwei Fei studies the composition and structure of planetary interiors with high-pressure instrumentation including the multianvil apparatus, the piston cylinder, and the diamond anvil cell. 

The Earth was formed through energetic and dynamic processes. Giant impacts, radioactive elements, and gravitational energy heated the  planet in its early stage, melting materials and paving the way for the silicate mantle and metallic core to separate.  As the planet cooled and solidified geochemical and geophysical “fingerprints” resulted from

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