We've heard about it from time to time in scientific journals. It's played parts in some science fiction novels and movies. Now it appears it may finally come to fruition.
It seems someone may have managed to create metallic hydrogen.
While many of you may not understand what metallic hydrogen is, think of it as the hydrogen version of a diamond. A diamond is a version of carbon that is hard, metastable, and consists of a single interlocked crystalline structure. Metallic hydrogen is a metastable, solid form of hydrogen that will rmeain solid even at room temperature and pressure. It is extremely dense, is superconducting at room temperature, and, if it can be massed produced, used as fuel for spacecraft that will allow for faster and more economical space travel.
But what I find to me more interesting is the reaction from the scientific community, much of which is skeptical. That there are skeptics that physicists Isaac Silvera and Ranga Dias mamaged to create metallic hydrogen is not unexpected. In fact, such skepticism should be welcomed, and is a necessary part of the scientific method. That Silvera nd Dias themselves have some doubts about whether they have actually created metallic hydrogen rather than liquid hydrogen is merely another step in the process of scientific discovery.
It is as colleagues and skeptics review their work and attempt to recreate it that the true power of the scientific method shows itself. If others are able to recreate their results it shows that there was no error in their method. If follow on analysis shows that they indeed manage to create metallic hydrogen, it will blow the lid off of the energy industry. If, however, neither Silvera and Dias or their colleagues can recreate the experiment and its results, then the claim will be relegated to “the ash heap of history”, just as it should be. That's how it's supposed to work.
Too bad that many involved in another area of science, specifically climate science, are either unwilling or unable to follow the same process in regards to the many times renamed Anthropogenic Global Warming, leaving many holes in the claims that man is solely responsible for any of the climate change that has taken place over the past 200 years or so. So much of it is based upon faulty, incomplete, or 'adjusted' data, global circulation models that are so defective they haven't even come close to matching the actual results measured and observed, and a total unwillingness to entertain that there other factors involved that are likely to have a larger effect on climate than human activity. To attempt to silence skeptics, the very people they need to validate or invalidate their hypotheses, they have left the realms of science and have entered one of dogma and unquestioning faith. That's not science. That's religion, and woe be to the heretic or blasphemer!
