In a recurring comic bit, David Letterman used to place household items — a plate of jelly doughnuts, a six-pack of beer — in an 80-ton hydraulic press, gleefully watching as the items squirted, exploded and disintegrated.
That was but a light touch compared with the pressures Russell J. Hemley and his colleagues exert on molecules at the Carnegie Institution for Science here.
Image: Jinfu Shu
