Klutzes make fine astronomers

The weight of those top layers bears down on what's beneath, generating extreme pressures unlike anything that occurs naturally on Earth. And that's when astrophysicists go to the laboratory: To find out what happens to planetary innards at these high pressures, scientists squeeze samples of planet-stuff (like carbon) between the tips of two diamonds. Pressure gets even more extreme when lasers are added to the mix, vaporizing the diamond and sending a powerful shock wave through the sample. Even black holes are being recreated -- or, at least, simulated -- in the lab. Ziang Xhang, of the University of California Berkeley at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is mimicking black holes using exotic "metamaterials"--the same stuff that can bend light backwards and might one day create real-life invisibility cloaks. More>