Hair-thin wire to help simulate cosmic conditions

Extreme conditions prevail inside stars and planets. The pressure reaches millions of bars, and it can be several million degrees hot. Sophisticated methods make it possible to create such states of matter in the laboratory -- albeit only for the blink of an eye and in a tiny volume. So far, this has required the world's most powerful lasers, and the opportunities for experiments are correspondingly rare. A research team has now succeeded in creating and observing extreme conditions with a much smaller laser.