The New Alchemists: Breaking Through the Barriers of High Pressure - Hardcover

Spanning centuries of top-notch science, bitter rivalry, outright fraud, and self-delusion, the author weaves a narrative centered around the brilliant, often eccentric, and controversial pioneers of high-pressure research. These new alchemists have subjected ordinary beach sand to tons of pressure to shed light on the extinction of the dinosaurs, learned that gases such as hydrogen and oxygen become dense metals lying deep inside large planets, and have transformed almost any carbon-rich material into diamonds. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Robert M. Hazen is Robinson Professor of Earth Science at George Mason University.