# Hypothetical vise generates near infinite pressure. What happens to everyday materials it squeezes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 12, 2017, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979 "2017-03-12T04:45:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/1 "2017-03-12T04:45:40Z")
Let’s say you had an atomic powered vise with indestructible force field jaws that could generate up to super gravity levels of pressure on everyday materials while containing them inside the compressing force field . What would happen to iron, rock, tungsten, wood or other everyday materials as they got to the limits of structural compressibility and the force field kept squeezing? ? Explosions? Phase change? Atomic stuff? ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/2 "2017-03-12T09:25:03Z")
You will go through a number of phase changes, and maybe eventually form degenerate matter > **[Degenerate matter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_matter)** > > Degenerate matter is a highly dense state of fermionic matter in which the Pauli exclusion principle exerts significant pressure in addition to, or in lieu of, thermal pressure. The description applies to matter composed of electrons, protons, neutrons or other fermions. The term is mainly used in astrophysics to refer to dense stellar objects where gravitational pressure is so extreme that quantum mechanical effects are significant. This type of matter is naturally found in stars in their fin De... Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/3 "2017-03-12T11:12:50Z")
Phase change certainly. Metallic phases for normally non-metallic elements. There is a whole bunch of science already done on this using diamond anvils. [Wikipeadia page.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell) ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/4 "2017-03-14T04:34:22Z")
Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/5 "2017-03-14T15:04:03Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > You will go through a number of phase changes, and maybe eventually form degenerate matter > [Degenerate matter - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_matter) > > Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk And if you crank the vice a liiiiittle bit more (OK, a lot more)… [quantum black hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole). After this, your vise doesn’t matter any more. Event horizon, like honey badger, don’t give a fuck. It tunnels down headed for the nearest substantial center of gravity – Earth’s center. While orbiting within the Earth, it consumes atoms and molecules and gets more massive, slowly coring out the planet like a worm-riddled apple. After a few centuries? millennia? Earth is gone and a planetary-mass miniature black hole serenely orbits the Sun where Earth used to be. Nice work. You haaaad to crank that vise one more turn. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/6 "2017-03-14T18:33:26Z")
No worries about consuming the earth. As your link says, the micro black hole would evaporate within nano seconds giving off a nasty burst of Hawking radiation as it shrunk down to the Planck mass. Or at least that’s the current standard model understanding of what would happen. As you might imagine it’s hard to get funding to study micro black holes that might eat the planet 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/7 "2017-03-14T18:46:20Z")
There is no Standard Model understanding of what happens to Planck-scale black holes. Even if we expand the definition of “Standard Model” to include everything we know about gravity, there’s still no understanding. You simply can’t discuss a Planck-scale hole without quantum gravity, which we don’t have. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-vise-generates-near-infinite-pressure-what-happens-to-everyday-materials-it-squeezes/781979/8 "2017-03-14T20:47:35Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > … > After this, your vise doesn’t matter any more. Event horizon, like honey badger, don’t give a fuck. It tunnels down headed for the nearest substantial center of gravity – Earth’s center. While orbiting within the Earth, it consumes atoms and molecules and gets more massive, slowly coring out the planet like a worm-riddled apple. > … Not disputing the learned comments just above on micro black holes. As a separate matter we’ve done a few threads on macroscopic, but still “small”, black holes encountering a planet. The naïve assumption is something as you suggest; an unstoppable vacuum cleaner eating the planet from the inside out in geologically short time. IIRC the reality is rather more mundane and would take millions of years to make much difference.