TPa

TPa, or terapascal, is a unit of pressure in the International System of Units (SI). It equals 10^12 pascals (Pa), or 1,000,000 megapascals (MPa) and 1,000 gigapascals (GPa). The pascal is defined as one newton per square meter, so a terapascal represents an extremely high pressure, used primarily in scientific contexts rather than everyday measurements.

In practice, terapascal-scale pressures occur in extreme environments such as the interiors of large planets and in high-energy physics experiments. Laboratory methods like diamond anvil cells routinely reach hundreds of gigapascals, while ultrafast dynamic compression with high-energy lasers and pulsed power facilities has produced pressures in the terapascals range for very short times. Such conditions are relevant for studying the behavior of materials under extreme compression and for modeling planetary and stellar interiors.

Notation and usage: The term is written as terapascal with the abbreviation TPa. In texts, 1 TPa = 10^12 Pa. Because of its size, terapascal is mainly used in specialized scientific literature rather than in engineering or daily life. The unit is part of SI, and while rarely used outside research, it provides a convenient scale for describing pressures far above atmospheric pressure.