In the 1950s explosives began to be used to generate ultrahigh pressures in condensed substances in order to modify their properties and structure. Notwithstanding the short duration of an explosion, its energy proved to be high enough to perform physical-chemical transformations of substances, and the new method gained wide industrial applications. It has both advan tages and drawbacks in comparison with the traditional method of static compression. The latter method, notorious for its cumbersome and expensive machin ery, allows one to maintain high pressure as long as one pleases and to...