Yep, my supervisor takes the attitude that there's no point being scared of it - sure it's nasty stuff, but you're not going to help anything by being on an adrenaline kick while interacting with it. Being scared also doesn't help with spills: you just need to be able to step through the containment/decontamination without freezing up in a panic. (The upside of the couple of minor spills a few months back is that I now know I can do this.)
Regarding your main question -- that's more about tech than about geology, exactly, and as such means that the answer is slippery around what counts as "observe" and "directly". Laser-heated diamond-anvil cells are a thing (26GPa & 900K were already being achieved in 1996); beyond that... enh. Talk to the engineers :-p
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regna
Re: An uplifting experience
Date: 2014-06-22 09:52 pm (UTC)Regarding your main question -- that's more about tech than about geology, exactly, and as such means that the answer is slippery around what counts as "observe" and "directly". Laser-heated diamond-anvil cells are a thing (26GPa & 900K were already being achieved in 1996); beyond that... enh. Talk to the engineers :-p
:-)