Dense, strongly coupled plasmas appear in a wide range of scenarios, 
including pulsed power experiments, laser fusion schemes, and various 
astrophysical objects (white dwarfs, giant planets, brown dwarfs, neutron 
star surfaces). Studies of this state of matter in the laboratory have 
various difficulties, chief among them are that experiments are typically 
small (micron scale) and highly transient (picosecond scale). Worse, due 
to the high densities, such plasmas are also largely opaque to radiation.  
Thus, even basic quantities such as temperature and density are very
difficult to measure, and one usually relies on either a ?weak? 
measurement (measuring as much as you can, but leave open important 
quantities) or estimating unknown information with models (e.g., 
hydrodynamic simulations that employ approximate equations of state).  
Recently, however, x-ray Thomson scattering (XRTS) has been developed as a 
possible diagnostic for dense plasmas, with the promise that all basic 
information (electron and ion temperatures, electron density, and 
ionization state) is available, in addition to information about the 
many-body physics (e.g., transport and collective modes). I will begin 
this talk with a very general overview of the field of dense, strongly 
coupled plasmas for the non-specialist.  Next, I will discuss how XRTS is 
being used to reveal information that was previously unavailable, and how 
that can change the field. I will go into some details of theoretical 
models for the XRTS spectrum to show what can be learned from the XRTS 
spectrum.  Finally, I will discuss a particular feature (ion acoustic wave 
resonance) in the spectrum that reveals the viscous hydrodynamical 
properties of such plasmas.