There is never a dull moment on In the Field, Nature reporters’ blog for scientific conferences and events. Rachel Courtland recently blogged from the American Physical Society conference in New Orleans on a Town Hall talk on ultra-high pressures: “The basic idea? Squeeze hard on any element, ratchet up the temperature, and you end up with some unexpected new phases. At high enough pressures and temperatures, ordinary, transparent water becomes opaque. Push even further, and it becomes transparent. Dive down into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and the pressures quickly become so high that even hydrogen becomes metallic.”
Simultaneously, Eric Hand was rocking at the lunar and planetary science conference in Houston. Read about the graduate student who was shot at Northern Illinois University, but still turned in his conference poster on time, and enjoy a valedictory account of NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s lecture and the characteristically blunt question and answer session that followed it.
Nature 452, xiii; 27 March 2008