So, lets get this straight. Let's spend billions of money, buying toys for these so called scientist to play with their toys; and they produce nothing, except "We're really delighted, and it's exciting as it opens up a whole box of new questions for future research." In other words.. NOTHING. How about this. PRODUCE something that will benefit mankind in the next year or two or we will stop your funding and you can go stand in the unemployment line with your brainy resume for a job to dig ditches. What BS. Research is turning out to be full employment for over educated elitist that produce NOTHING.

S Michael, you sound like a time traveler from the Middle Ages: If it isn't something you can use next Monday it is not worth thinking about.

I aqm waiting for results, might be interesting, at pressures like inside the sun or Jupiter.

This could lead to something quite interesting. Let them keep going and see what happens.

"So, lets get this straight. Let's spend billions of money, buying toys for these so called scientist to play with their toys; and they produce nothing, except "We're really delighted, and it's exciting as it opens up a whole box of new questions for future research." In other words.. NOTHING. How about this. PRODUCE something that will benefit mankind in the next year or two or we will stop your funding and you can go stand in the unemployment line with your brainy resume for a job to dig ditches. What BS. Research is turning out to be full employment for over educated elitist that produce NOTHING." - S- Michael 2015
Says the person who is posting on a computer, no doubt has used penicillin and makes use of NUMEROUS inventions that began just like these findings.

Yup. How do you think progress is made by playing with outdated cheap toys in the garage?

The densest material produced in the lab is in the National Ignition Facility targets (about 13x lead). These are in a different regime, as they are at many millions of degrees as last only picoseconds.

The frontier of material science dealing with extreme pressures and temperatures is still much at its infancy. I can't wait to learn more from this field of science. We could learn more about the state of matter inside planets like Neptunus, Uranus, and the stuff Earth's core is made for example.

S Michael,
I agree with you regardless of the snarky little remark that DH8 made. (Not to mention the fact that neither computers nor Penicillin were discovered by physicists.)
What's most infuriating is how they make these comments sound as if they know exactly what's going on inside of a particle. Then act as if these discoveries support the standard model and are simply little quirks or mechanisms resultant of a natural progression of the scientific method.
The arrogance these individuals exhibit is even more maddening. When they pontificate from on high theory's they know to be incorrect, it makes me want to tear my hair out. Every day more and more evidence (including the discovery mentioned in the story) demonstrate that the Standard Model is wrong. And every day, more and more of these little prigs are resigned to accept it.
"Show me the math!" they sneer when challenged by a new hypothesis or theory. But the fact is that in all of the years since the Standard Model was first presented, no one has been able to mathematically join the macroscopic world to quantum mechanics at any level.
So I agree with you S Michael. Be damned the little darlings of acedemia. Deny their funding and support true scientific research.

While I am against public money, e.g., taxation (theft) I support this research. If the majority agree to be taxed, then this is good use of their money. Going to the moon was a waste of money. Much of NASA's spending was really for weapons research (rocketry & satellites).