Liquid Metallic Hydrogen

Liquid metallic hydrogen, which the planets Jupiter and Saturn are made of, is not an earthly substance. Even so, we might be able to get an idea of what it is from another substance called Mercury. Mercury is what is found in a thermometer.

As shown in this picture, the element Mercury, at room temperature and at surface pressure, is a metallic liquid.

At temperatures and pressures within the giant planets, 10,000 degrees and thousands of times the pressure at sea level, the element hydrogen, which is normally a gas, becomes a metallic liquid. (It changes phase from a gas to a liquid).

Since the environment within a giant planet, of thousands of degrees in temperature, and extreme pressures, cannot be duplicated at earth at all, we may never be able to see liquid metallic hydrogen. But it may look very much like Mercury does in this picture.


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