Laser-induced Shocks In Diamond Anvil Can Achieve Pressures Inside Supergiant Planets – ScienceDaily.com: Combining diamond anvils and powerful lasers, laboratory researchers have developed a technique that should be able to squeeze materials to pressures 100 to 1,000 times greater than possible today, reproducing conditions expected in the cores of supergiant planets. Until now, these pressures have only been available experimentally next to underground nuclear explosions.

To date, Jeanloz and his colleagues have achieved pressures near 10 million atmospheres using the 30 kilojoule ultraviolet Omega laser at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics in New York. They hope eventually to use the 2 megajoule laser of LLNL’s National Ignition Facility to achieve more than a billion atmospheres of pressure.

In a diamond anvil, a tiny sample – either liquid or solid – is compressed between the tips of two diamonds. In the new technique, several powerful laser beams zap one of the diamonds, vaporizing it and sending a shock wave through the sample that compresses it even more. The shock wave compresses the sample for 1 to 2 nanoseconds, enough time to study the properties of the sample, which can range from hydrogen and helium, the stuff of stars and giant planets, to elements that comprise Earth.

Science at its finest, pushing the envelope to even higher limits.