Under pressure, sodium and hydrogen could undergo a metamorphosis, emerging as a superconductor

Under pressure, sodium and hydrogen could undergo a metamorphosis, emerging as a superconductor: Using an open-source computer program that UB PhD student David Lonie designed, Zurek and Baettig looked for sodium polyhydrides that, under pressure, would be viable superconductor candidates. The program, XtalOpt, is an evolutionary algorithm that incorporates quantum mechanical calculations to determine the most stable geometries or crystal structures of solids.
In analyzing the results, Baettig and Zurek found that NaH9, which contains one sodium atom for every nine hydrogen atoms, is predicted to become metallic at an experimentally achievable pressure of about 250 gigapascals -- about 2.5 million times the Earth's standard atmospheric pressure, but less than the pressure at the Earth's core (about 3.5 million atmospheres).