Ever wonder what’s at the core of the Earth? Of course not.  We all know it’s carnivorous twenty foot magma worms.  That’s why we stay away.  That is, until a bunch of smarty-pants scientists decided to doom us all.  They’re going to study the Earth’s core.  How do they manage this, you ask?

At the heart of the experiments to be carried out at ID24 is what is known as a diamond anvil cell – an established and remarkably simple means to create high pressures by confining tiny samples between the points of two carefully cut diamonds.

The samples are compressed at a pressure millions of times higher than that on the Earth’s surface.

High-power lasers are then fired through the diamonds at the samples, heating them to higher than 10,000C. Then X-rays are used as a probe to determine the precise composition and chemistry of samples.

The frightening creatures living at Earth’s core are not going to appreciate us busting into their homes and shooting them with lasers.  We are all going to die.

via BBC