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this is scientific american sixty second science I'm

Christopher and d'allata There's solid and there's liquid and now there's something in between called chain melts.

At an atomic level you have this interaction and this mix up between liquid and solid.

Andreas Herman is a condensed matter physicist at the University of Edinburgh.

What he and his team have discovered, using computer simulations simulations is that under certain

pressures and temperatures potassium can be both liquid and solid at the

same time. Specifically they squashed simulated potassium atoms with really extreme pressures, 200 to 400,000

atmospheres. That's at least 200 times greater than the pressure in the depths of the Mariana

trench. At that pressure, the atoms form two interlocking crystal lattices.

Add heat to that.

You don't need too much, just a little bit above the boiling point of water.

And one of those lattices begins to melt,

...