At sufficiently high pressure, hydrogen is believed to become a monatomic metal with exotic electronic properties. Because of the very high pressures required to create such states, hydrogen-rich compounds have been considered alternative materials that could exhibit many of the properties of atomic metallic hydrogen, such as very high-temperature superconductivity, but at accessible pressures. With the help of theoretical predictions, a research team using the HPCAT facility has successfully synthesized superhydrides with La atoms in an fcc lattice at 170 GPa upon heating to about 1000 K… more