San Diego, Calif., Dec. 5 -- By focusing proton beams and using high-intensity lasers, a team of scientists have discovered a new way to heat materials and create new states of matter in the laboratory. For example, they recreated conditions that allowed the study of the properties of warm, dense matter found in the interior of giant planets, such as Jupiter.
New applications for using proton beams range from heating materials, to creating new types of matter that couldn’t be made by any other means, to medical applications, to insights into planetary science.