{"id":239595,"date":"2026-06-25T02:25:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T07:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/laser-experiments-push-helium-to-record-shock-pressures"},"modified":"2026-06-25T02:25:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T07:25:47","slug":"laser-experiments-push-helium-to-record-shock-pressures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/laser-experiments-push-helium-to-record-shock-pressures","title":{"rendered":"Laser experiments push helium to record shock pressures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/laser-experiments-push-helium-to-record-shock-pressures.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Deep inside gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, hydrogen and helium coexist under pressures millions of times greater than Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Under those conditions, helium may separate from hydrogen and influence a planet\u2019s internal heat flow, structure and magnetic field. Understanding these processes and how these materials behave under extreme conditions is essential to building accurate models of planetary evolution.<\/p>\n<p>New experimental results, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1103\/87r3-tgy1\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Physical Review Research<\/i><\/a>, reveal the behavior of helium at unprecedented pressures. The research, conducted by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of California, Berkeley, the French Commissariat \u00e0 l\u2019\u00c9nergie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA) and the University of Rochester\u2019s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), shows that helium behaves differently from what most broad-range theoretical models predicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deep inside gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, hydrogen and helium coexist under pressures millions of times greater than Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Under those conditions, helium may separate from hydrogen and influence a planet\u2019s internal heat flow, structure and magnetic field. Understanding these processes and how these materials behave under extreme conditions is essential to building [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}