“Physicists Discover Strange New Phase of Solid Hydrogen using Machine Learning”

By teaching machines to learn some quantum tricks, physicists have discovered a strange new phase of hydrogen in solid form. While this discovery is purely theoretical for now, it could help us better understand the behavior of matter from the smallest scales to the internal mechanics of the largest planets in the universe.

Discovered by an international team of researchers, this new phase of solid hydrogen follows a demonstration of a model of molecular hydrogen under extreme conditions: To use a food analogy, its shape changes from a ball stacked on top of a pile of oranges to that of an egg.

Hydrogen usually requires very low temperatures and very high pressures Compact form. Through new machine learning studies of this particular phase change, scientists have discovered a new arrangement of molecules.

“We started with the not-so-ambitious goal of fleshing out a theory from what we know,” He said Physicist Scott Jensen of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it was more interesting than that. The emergence of this new behavior. In fact, this is the dominant behavior at higher temperatures and pressures, something for which there was no clue in the old theory.”

The updated machine learning algorithm plays an important role in research: it is able to model the actions of thousands of atoms rather than hundreds of studies of quantum phenomena.

Researchers use an improved version of what is known as Kuantum Monte Carlo QMC technique: Basically, it uses random sampling and the mathematics of probability to see how large groups of atoms behave collectively, groups that are difficult to study in actual experiments.

A second computational method—another one capable of handling more atoms but without precision—was used to verify the results. Since the results are congruent, they show that the upgraded QMC technology is working as intended.

“Machine learning turns out to teach us a lot of things,” He said Physicist David Siberly of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “We had seen signs of the new behavior in previous simulations, but we didn’t believe it because we could only hold a small number of atoms.”

“With our machine learning model, we can take full advantage of the most accurate methods and see what’s really going on.”

Simply put, machine learning components have increased the accuracy and range of simulations that scientists can run, using existing data and past simulations to make future simulations more accurate in their forecasts.

Hydrogen is not only the most abundant element in the universe, but also the simplest of all its atoms: one proton and one electron. This means that new discoveries about hydrogen can affect almost everything else in physics.

At this time, it’s too early to say what this new phase of solid hydrogen means, and more experiments and simulations are needed to take a closer look at it. However, the study of hydrogen-filled planets like Jupiter and Saturn is just one area where this additional understanding could be useful.

“We want to understand everything, so we have to start with a system that we can attack.” He said cyberly. “Hydrogen is simple, so it’s important to know that we can deal with it.”

Research published in Physical examination letter.