LIQUID CARBON is difficult to produce because a sample of solid carbon, melted quickly by a laser, will want to repose back into the form of graphite. Physicists at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) have sought to melt carbon with picosecond laser pulses, and report the observation of a liquid phase, the evidence being the fleeting presence of periodic stripes in microscopic pictures of the tiny (200 micron) spots on a graphite surface under bombardment. The researchers argue that the stripes could not be present in a fully solid phase. The liquid is scarcely glimpsed, however, before it quickly solidifies, partly into an amorphous carbon structure. (M.B. Agranat et al., Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (JETP) Letters, a Russian journal translated into English by AIP.)