The growing field of shock physics has received crucial support from the UK government. Imperial College will get £10 million (US$20 million) over five years to establish a research institute for shock physics: the study of matter at extreme conditions and how materials respond to shock waves, high pressures and temperatures. The funding comes from the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the private contractor charged by the UK Ministry of Defence to develop and maintain nuclear weapons.

Imperial's new Institute for Shock Physics will consolidate theoretical and computational research by Earth scientists, engineers and energy researchers. They will investigate the physical properties of materials exposed to extreme pressures or temperatures such as those associated with asteroid impact on Earth.

Although no defence research will be carried out at the institute, AWE hydrodynamics scientist David Holder says it will be an important training ground for future employees. The directorship, three faculty positions and 20 PhD fellowships are currently available. As of 2009, a one-year MSc course will be offered.

Interim director Steven Rose says interest in new energy sources such as fusion and in understanding phenomena such as tsunamis are among the factors driving the field. “In the UK, there is yet no single point of focus for these disparate bits of related research,” he says. New equipment, such as a gas-gun able to fire a projectile at several kilometres per second to create high-velocity impacts, will help researchers investigate, for example, how aircraft would respond to a meteorite strike.

The additional infrastructure could be key for the field as a whole. “With the Imperial institute, the field of shock physics gets a boost of experimental capabilities,” says Yogendra Gupta, director of Washington State University's Institute for Shock Physics and a leader in the field.

Gupta says the recent ability to achieve pico- and nanosecond measures of matter being destroyed at extreme conditions sheds light not only on the fundamental physics necessary to develop the next generation of materials, but on new ways to generate energy. New opportunities should come next year with the completion of the US Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility. It will enable researchers to conduct fusion experiments by squeezing matter with shock waves.