Chemists claim metallic hydrogen creation first

For over a century, scientists have said it should be possible to turn hydrogen into a metal. Now, a pair of chemists in Germany claim to have finally performed the feat, although others remain sceptical.

In the late 19th century, chemists pointed out that hydrogen, topping the column of alkali metals in the periodic table, ought to form a metal itself. Physicists Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington predicted in 1935 that hydrogen should become a metallic solid at very high pressures - around 25GPa - but experiments later performed at these pressures showed no trace of a metal transition. More recent experiments, reaching pressures above 100GPa and temperatures approaching absolute zero, have offered hints of a metal transition, but generally results have been inconclusive.   More...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/November/14111102.asp