Down there at the bottom, just before my probes stop sending, is a core of hot metallic hydrogen.
The thick shell of metallic yet still fluid hydrogen ended abruptly.
The quest to see metallic hydrogen in laboratory at low temperature and static compression continues.
Remove the pressure and the "metallic hydrogen" will revert to its more common forms.
It's "liquid metallic hydrogen" there, and if anything could live under those conditions, it was unlikely to find Earth interesting.
"This is no longer metallic hydrogen," Yurkovsky said when the last bubbles were gone.
What had started out as a quest for metallic hydrogen now became a serious hunt for fusion.
The core is metallic hydrogen, maybe pressed into a still denser form than in Jupiter.
"And in contact with the planet's liquid metallic hydrogen?"
He was moving through liquid metallic hydrogen, heavily laced with deuterium.