Summary
Experimentalists can now generate terapascal pressures in the laboratory, conditions sufficient to alter the structure of atoms and the nature of interatomic bonding (1). These are the pressures of planets’ interiors and origins—7 TPa at Jupiter’s center, 4 TPa in the middle of Saturn, 0.36 TPa for Earth’s inner core—and planet growth involves impacts that generate pressures into the terapascal range (2). Understanding materials and their properties at such conditions provides key insights into how planetary bodies form and then evolve over billions of years. On page 1063 of this issue, Fratanduono et al. (3) establish a new calibration for such experiments, and their pressure-volume relations for gold (Au) and platinum (Pt) can now serve as reliable standards to >1 TPa.
