Research

New Physics

June 1, 2019

A decision to take a physics class for “fun” During her senior year at New York University changed the Course of Pearl Sandick’s life. At the time, Sandick was majoring In math and had planned to continue her studies in a Ph.D. Program. “The professor noticed that I was enjoying the physics Class and suggested that I think about a physics graduate program Instead of math,” said Sandick, associate professor of physics and Astronomy and associate chair of the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy. “I was floored—no professor had ever directly Encouraged me like that before—and she had a good point: I did Enjoy physics. After some serious conversations with my mom and My professors, I decided to make the switch. The encouragement of one professor literally made all the difference.”

She earned a Ph.D. From the University of Minnesota in 2008 and Was a postdoctoral fellow in the Theory Group at the University of Texas at Austin before moving to Utah and the U in 2011.

Beyond the Standard Model

As a theoretical particle physicist, Sandick is able to study some of the largest and smallest things in the universe. Dark matter Is the mysterious stuff that gravitationally binds galaxies and Clusters of galaxies together, but despite large-scale evidence for the existence of dark matter, there are compelling arguments that Dark matter might actually be a new type of elementary particle. Some particles are composite, like protons and neutrons. Electrons Are an example of an elementary particle—they are the most Fundamental building blocks of their type and are not composed of other particles. Other examples of elementary particles include Quarks, neutrinos, and photons.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics is the theory that explains how all the elementary particles interact with each other and combine to form composite objects like protons and neutrons. Pearl Sandick 7 The Standard Model can make amazingly accurate predictions, which are tested in collider experiments and with cosmological observations, but the theory has some shortcomings that make particle physicists think there must be something beyond the Standard Model. For example, the Standard Model does not include a satisfactory explanation for the dark matter in the universe. Sandick’s research, currently supported by the National Science Foundation, is in exploring theories of “new physics” that fix theoretical problems with the Standard Model and explain previously unexplained phenomena like dark matter. “For any interesting new theory, my research proposes ways to experimentally support or falsify it, with the hope of eventually identifying the true fundamental theory of nature,” said Sandick.

Challenges for Women in Physics

Women are still widely underrepresented in physics. In college, Sandick got used to being one of the very few women in the room, and in graduate school, she wanted to become a physics professor at a time when only 5% of full professors in physics were women. “Like many women in male-dominated professions, I’ve experienced my share of ‘gender- related weirdness,’” she said. “Every day I’m thankful that the bulk of my negative gender-related experiences are, and continue to be, primarily exhausting and disappointing rather than dangerous or devastating.” Sandick notes that there are still a lot of equity and cultural issues to address in the field. “Science should be for everyone, and there’s a lot of work to be done to address the complex issues that lead to severe underrepresentation of certain groups. If we want to see change, we need to listen, learn, and do the work to make science more inclusive,” she said.

Sandick is committed to organizations that support women in physics. She has served on the American Physical Society’s (APS) Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) and was recently the Chair of the National Organizing Committee for the APS Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) The APS CUWiP hosts approximately 2,000 undergraduate physics majors each January at various locations around the country to discuss science, career paths for physicists, and social issues that can affect the experiences of scientists from underrepresented groups. Locally, she is the founder and faculty sponsor of the University of Utah Women in Physics and Astronomy (WomPA).

When she isn’t teaching or doing research, she spends every minute with her family—a three-year-old daughter and a supportive husband.

“This is an incredibly exciting time for dark matter and particle physics,” said Sandick. “We’re still searching for physics beyond the Standard Model, including an explanation for dark matter, so there’s still a lot of work to be done. Right now, one of the most exciting challenges is using experimental data in novel ways in order to get every bit of information out of it that we possibly can. It’s a great time to be creative in terms of how new physics might look from the theoretical point of view and how it might appear in current or upcoming experiments.”

Distinguished Research

May 10, 2019

“Since Professor Molinero joined the Department of Chemistry as Assistant Professor in 2006, she has developed a thriving research program in physical and materials chemistry, with foci on elucidating the phase behavior of water and its impact on atmospheric processes, and the design of new materials for energy and cryopreservation. Professor Molinero’s ground breaking research at the University of Utah has already resulted in over 290 presentations at conferences, universities, and research institutions all over the world (110 of them by students and postdocs of Molinero), and 95 journal articles—including three in Nature—that have gathered almost five thousand citations,” said one nominator.

“Professor Molinero’s work is a hallmark of what research and scholarship at our University should be about. In her 12 years of independent research, she has made an indelible mark in several fundamental areas of physical and computational chemistry, with implications that extend to atmospheric sciences and the design of materials for energy and catalysis. Professor Molinero is a leader in the Chemistry and Physics communities. She is the Vice-chair and Chair-elect of the Theory subdivision of the American Chemical Society, member of the nominating committee of the Division of Chemical Physics of the American Physical Society, member of the Board of Managers of the American Institute of Physics Publishing, the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Chemical Physics and of The Journal of Physical Chemistry, has been on the selection committee of major awards by the American Chemical Society…”

2019 Research Scholar

May 10, 2019

The College of Science Research Scholar Award is given annually to one graduating student who demonstrates a record of exceptional success in research and education. From the Class of 2019, we have selected Cameron Own, a highly-accomplished student who is graduating with a bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry, Physics, and a minor in Mathematics this year.

In addition to his studies, Cameron has been heavily involved in research during his time at the U, working in the Armentrout Research Group since he was a freshman. His involvement in the Armentrout Group has led to multiple publications, on three of which Cameron has been the lead author. Furthermore, Cameron’s research has also aided in his success in national scholarship competitions. As a junior, he was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, and as a senior, he was awarded a Winston Churchill Scholarship. This latter award will allow Cameron to ascertain a MPhil at the University of Cambridge next year, after which he will attend Harvard University to obtain a Ph.D.

Cameron has enjoyed his time at the U, and credits his success to the supportive environment provided in the Chemistry Department at the U and in the Armentrout Research Group. Cameron has also received multiple awards from the Chemistry Department, including the Ronald Ragsdale Scholarship and the Ferdinand Peterson Scholarship during his sophomore year. Ultimately, Cameron thinks he wants to go into industry or a start-up following the completion of his degrees, but is open to the idea of becoming a professor. Lastly, Cameron would like to the thank the College of Science for considering him for this award and for creating an environment at the U that focuses on research and scientific curiosity.

Associate V.P. for Research

April 3, 2019

The College of Science is pleased to announce the appointment of Diane Pataki, Ph.D., as the Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah, effective April 1st, 2019. She will continue to serve as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Science through July 1st, 2019.

Dr. Pataki is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the university. Prior to arriving in Utah in 2012, Dr. Pataki received a B.A. in environmental science at Barnard College and an M.S. and Ph.D.at the Duke University Nicholas School of Environment.

Dr. Pataki’s research work is transdisciplinary and has spanned the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, coupled human-natural processes related to urban CO2 emissions, and the role of urban landscaping and forestry in the socioecology of cities. Her lab currently studies human-environment interactions related to urban biodiversity, resource use, & landscape design, and continues to collaborate with social scientists, urban planners, landscape architects, engineers, and local stakeholders to understand the ecological and social consequences of urban landscape change.

In addition to her research, Dr. Pataki served as a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine for 8 years where she was the founding Director of the Center for Environmental Biology and the Steele Burnand Anza Borrego Desert Research Center. She has also served as a Program Director in the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology and a member of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Board of Scientific Counselors.

Dr. Pataki is looking forward to leading efforts across our campus to coordinate and enhance support for research proposal submissions, grantsmanship, and grants management. She will succeed Cynthia Furse, Ph.D., as the new Associate Vice President for Research. Dr. Furse will be transitioning back to full-time teaching and research on July 1st, 2019.

Please join us in thanking Dr. Furse for her exceptional service, and in welcoming Dr. Pataki in her new position.

2019 Churchill Scholar

February 2, 2019

Cameron Owen of Boise, Idaho, a senior honors student majoring in chemistry and physics and minoring in mathematics, has received the prestigious Churchill Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is one of only 15 students nationally to receive the award this year and is the fourth consecutive Churchill Scholar from the U.

“Cameron’s achievement is a testament to his scientific curiosity and diligence in his undergraduate research,” said Dan Reed, senior vice president for Academic Affairs. “A fourth Churchill Scholarship award in as many years demonstrates the value of undergraduate research and mentorship experiences at the U, and that our students are among the best and brightest in the world.”

The Churchill Scholarship, established in 1963 at the request of Winston Churchill, provides undergraduates with outstanding academic achievement in the science, technology, engineering and math fields the opportunity to complete a one-year master’s program at the University of Cambridge. Students go through a rigorous endorsement process in order to apply, but only after their home institution has been vetted with the Winston Churchill Foundation. The U was added to the foundation in 2014.

Owen, a recipient of a 2018 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, came out of high school with an interest in chemistry. He joined the lab of Peter Armentrout, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, after hearing about Armentrout’s research in his honors science cohort. While at the U, Owen has published his research and traveled twice to the Netherlands as part of the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

Owen and Armentrout, in an ongoing collaborative effort with the Air Force Research Laboratory, are currently studying the activation of methane by metal atoms, particularly gold, in the gas phase. Methane activation, the process of breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond of methane, and subsequent functionalization could eventually be used to convert the enormous amounts of methane from natural and shale gas feedstocks into usable products like methanol or ethane. “I want the activation of methane into liquid fuels and other viable products to be environmentally beneficial and economically advantageous,” Owen said. “Current processes that activate methane are exorbitant in both time and energy.”

At Cambridge, Owen will explore how methane chemically attaches to the surfaces of certain metals. “My project will be purely theoretical,” he said. “But I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned about certain metals that react with methane in the gas phase to potential catalysts of the future. You can extend those results to better understand the activation of other greenhouse gases in order to create more effective real-world catalysts.”

Owen is looking to continue his work in a doctoral program after his return from Cambridge.

Insects, Bacteria & Ice

January 10, 2019

Valeria Molinero

Contrary to what you may have been taught, water doesn’t always freeze to ice at 32 degrees F (zero degrees C). Knowing, or controlling, at what temperature water will freeze (starting with a process called nucleation) is critically important to answering questions such as whether or not there will be enough snow on the ski slopes or whether or not it will rain tomorrow.

Nature has come up with ways to control the formation of ice, though, and in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society University of Utah professor Valeria Molinero and her colleagues show how key proteins produced in bacteria and insects can either promote or inhibit the formation of ice, based on their length and their ability to team up to form large ice-binding surfaces. The results have wide application, particularly in understanding precipitation in clouds.

“We’re now able to predict the temperature at which the bacterium is going to nucleate ice depending on how many ice-nucleating proteins it has,” Molinero says, “and we’re able to predict the temperature at which the antifreeze proteins, which are very small and typically don’t work at very low temperatures, can nucleate ice.”

What is ice nucleation?
It’s long been known that life likes to mess with ice. Insects, fish and plants all produce various forms of antifreeze proteins to help them survive in below-freezing conditions. And plant pathogens, particularly the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae, employ proteins that promote the formation of ice to induce damage in their hosts. Before we can talk about how these proteins work, though, we need a quick refresher on how ice freezes.

Pure water, with no impurities, won’t freeze until it reaches -35 degrees C (-31 degrees F). That’s the temperature at which the water molecules will spontaneously arrange into a crystal lattice and start to recruit other molecules to join in. To start the freezing process at warmer temperatures, however, water molecules need something to hold on to, like a speck of dust, soot or other impurity, on which it can start building its crystal lattice. This is the process called nucleation.

Ice-nucleating proteins, such as those in Ps. syringae, bind to nascent ice crystallites in such a way as to reduce the energy cost of additional freezing. They can also aggregate together to further enhance their nucleating power. “It is a lot of group work!” Molinero says.

These proteins can be so efficient that they can nucleate ice at temperatures as warm as -2 degrees C (29 degrees F). Ice-nucleating proteins are already being put to use at ski resorts, with Colorado-based Snomax International marketing an additive containing Ps. syringae that gives snowmaking machines a boost.

Antifreeze proteins, however, also bind to ice, but force it to develop a curved surface that discourages additional freezing and requires much colder temperatures for ice to grow. Also, antifreeze proteins don’t aggregate together. “They have evolved to be loners, as their job is to find ice and stick to it,” Molinero says.

All of this was previously known, including the fact that antifreeze proteins were relatively small and ice-nucleating proteins were relatively large. What wasn’t known, though, was how the sizes and aggregating behaviors of the proteins affected the temperature of ice nucleation. That’s the question Molinero and her team set out to answer.

A “single bullet”
Molinero and graduate students Yuqing Qiu and Arpa Hudait conducted molecular simulations of protein interactions with water molecules to see how they affected the temperature of ice nucleation. Antifreeze and ice-nucleating proteins, Molinero says, bind to ice with nearly equal strength.

“Nature is using a single bullet in terms of interactions to address two completely different problems,” she says. “And the way it has resolved between antifreeze or ice nucleation is by changing the size of the proteins and their ability to team up to form larger ice-binding surfaces.”

Antifreeze proteins, they found, nucleated at just above -35 degrees C, which matched experimental data. Lengthening the simulated proteins increased the nucleation temperature, which plateaued after a certain length. The simulations predicted that further assembling around 35 bacterial proteins into larger domains was key to reach the ice-nucleating performance of Ps. syringae, with a nucleation temperature of -2 degrees C (29 degrees F).

“Now we can design new proteins or synthetic materials that nucleate ice at a specific temperature,” Molinero says.

Why it matters
The implications of such a finding extend all the way to the future of water on Earth.

Precipitation begins as ice, which nucleates and grows until it’s heavy enough to precipitate. At high altitudes where it’s colder, soot and dust can do the job of triggering nucleation. But at lower altitudes, it’s not dust that triggers nucleation—it’s bacteria.

Yes, the same proteins in Ps. syringae that aid snowmaking at ski resorts also aid ice formation at warmer temperatures, allowing low-altitude clouds to precipitate. In a warming climate, Molinero’s findings can help climate modelers better understand the conditions of cloud formation and precipitation and forecast how warming will affect the amount of ice nucleation and precipitation in the future.

“The ability to predict whether the clouds are going to freeze or not is super important in climate models, because ice formation determines precipitation and also the ratio of solar energy absorbed and reflected by our atmosphere,” Molinero says. “The challenge to predict whether ice is going to nucleate or not in clouds is a major limitation the predictive ability of weather and climate models.”

At a much smaller scale, however, the antifreeze and ice-nucleating proteins can be employed together in a fine-tuned ice dance: Some insects use antifreeze proteins to protect themselves down to around -8 degrees C (18 degrees F), but then employ ice-nucleating proteins at lower temperatures to contain ice growth before it gets out of hand.

“The big picture is that we now understand how proteins use their size and aggregation to modulate how much they can nucleate ice,” Molinero says. “I think that this is quite powerful.”

Discover 2018

December 15, 2018

This issue of Discover presents the stories and experiences of people who make the College of Science extraordinary. People just like you. You’re invited to discover the College in new and meaningful ways and to support our mission of student education, scientific discovery, and economic impact in Utah.

Featured Scientific Research
Scientific discoveries from each discipline in the College – Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics and Astronomy – are highlighted in this issue of Discover. Faculty members Leslie Sieburth, Scott Anderson, Christel Hohenegger, and Andrey Rogachev demonstrate how basic scientific research continues to impact and fuel Utah’s economy by providing new technologies and solutions.

School of Biological Sciences
In July, the Department of Biology was renamed the School of Biological Sciences to better represent the size and structure of the faculty research areas. The School has major thrusts in three research divisions: Cellular and Molecular, Ecology and Physiology, and Genetics and Evolution.

Imagine New Heights
The University of Utah is positioned to define the model of a 21st century University. The University's faculty, staff, and students conduct breakthrough research and scholarship, creating new knowledge, and translating those new discoveries and insights into practice – essential tasks to ensure Utah’s position in an increasingly competitive global environment. Imagine New Heights

Plant Genomics

October 8, 2018

QUESTION:

How does RNA decay contribute to gene expression? Could the RNA decay rate be regulated on a molecular basis in order to control genetic traits?

Gene expression is typically measured as messenger RNA (mRNA) abundance, and changes in that abundance are usually attributed to transcription, or synthesis, of mRNA inside the cell. However,
RNA abundance is also influenced by its disposal, or degradation, but how degradation controls RNA abundance is not well understood.

WHO:

“My research uses a plant model, Arabidopsis thaliana, a small mustard plant, and we found that mutants with defects in mRNA decapping proteins experienced abnormal cell growth,” says Leslie Sieburth, Professor of Biological Sciences at the U.

“Our curiosity about why the mutants showed such poor growth led us to discover another mRNA decay enzyme, which we call SOV. We noted in our publication, in 2010, that most eukaryotic genomes encode a very similar protein, including humans,” says Sieburth.

A few years later, in 2013, scientists studying a human disorder called Perlman syndrome discovered that it was caused by mutations in the same gene. The gene, SOV, is known as DIS3L2 in humans.

Perlman syndrome is a genetic disorder associated with overgrowth in the size of the body or a body part of infants. The condition is almost always fatal prior to birth. The disorder has been grouped with Renal cell carcinoma and an increased risk for Wilms tumor.

Starting in 2014, Sieburth investigated how mRNA decapping and SOV/DIS3L2 contribute to decay of all mRNAs using genome-wide approaches.

“A fruitful collaboration with Fred Adler, a professor of biology and mathematics at the U, one of his graduate students, Katrina Johnson, and my postdoc Reed Sorenson, identified the decay rates of more than 17,000 mRNAs, and the contributions from decapping and SOV/DIS3L2,” says Sieburth.

One unexpected discovery was that the mRNAs that decay the fastest use the mRNA decapping pathway. A second discovery was that Arabidopsis mutants lacking an active SOV initiate a feedback pathway where the mRNAs – that are normally degraded by SOV – switch decay pathways, decay faster, and are also transcribed faster.

The results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2018.

FUNDING:

Research in the Sieburth laboratory is supported by four National Science Foundation (NSF) grants totaling nearly $2 million. The largest grant, titled, “The role of regulated degradation in controlling cytoplasmic mRNA levels,” focuses on mRNA decay pathways and enzymes, such as SOV. The funding will extend to 2020.

Sieburth recently received a new award funded through NSF’s Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) program for her project, “Connecting RNA Molecular Kinetics to Developmental Regulation.”

Sieburth employs two undergraduate students, two graduate students – Alex Cummins and
Jessica Vincent – and one postdoctoral fellow, Reed Sorenson.

IMPACT:

Sieburth’s continuing genetic studies could provide new perspectives to fundamental cellular processes that are important in cancer biology and birth defects in humans.

In addition to research, Sieburth also is implementing new curriculum in the School of Biological Sciences. She is currently teaching a new class designed specifically for first-year students. The course, Fundamentals of Biology, is one part of a class sequence that includes two lecture-type classes and two laboratory classes.

“I led a curriculum reform committee, and along with nearly everyone in the School, have spent the past two years designing these courses, reading the literature to identify the instructional methods that have proven to lead to deep learning, and pulling together instructional materials,” says Sieburth. “We are a few months into the class now, and it is exciting to see that the students are engaged and learning.”

FUTURE:

Sieburth has three specific goals for the current NSF study, “The role of regulated degradation in controlling cytoplasmic mRNA levels.”

The first is to assess changes in mRNA decay rates in response to conditions where RNA abundance changes. Usually abundance changes are attributed to transcription, but few scientists have tested the contributions from RNA decay.

The second goal is to understand the feedback that occurs in SOV mutants in Arabidopsis.

Third, she wants to understand the basis for the wide range in mRNA decay rates, where half-life varies between 3.5 minutes and more than 24 hours.

2018 Churchill Scholar

June 3, 2018

Scott Neville receives Utah's third straight Churchill Scholarship.

Scott Neville of Clearfield, Utah, who graduated from the University of Utah in December with a degree in mathematics and in computer science, has received a prestigious Churchill Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

He is one of only 15 students in the U.S. to receive the award this year and is the third Churchill Scholar from the U, all of whom are mathematicians.

“Having three Churchill scholars in the last four years is truly remarkable,” said Ruth Watkins, president of the University of Utah. “There is no doubt that Scott will continue to successfully represent the U at Cambridge.”

Neville was drawn to math when he was introduced to the Collatz Conjecture in high school.

“The conjecture is interesting for its simplicity and difficulty, as well as its lack of consequence,” said Neville. “I proved via enumeration and equation manipulation that there was only one cycle with exactly one odd number, and none with exactly two odd numbers. This was a known result, but I was ecstatic. I realized there were unsolved problems in math and I could answer them.”

Neville enrolled at the U because he was already involved in an applied mathematics project with professor Duncan Metcalfe in the Anthropology department. The objective was to investigate infeasible years in radiocarbon dating. The work was funded by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

“This was a good learning experience in both research and communicating mathematics, since the senior researcher had only passing familiarity with the math involved,” says Neville.

The project resulted in a poster given at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2016.

“In addition, I knew the U had a rigorous mathematics and computer science program, but I hadn’t actually met any of those professors,” says Neville.

While attending the U, Neville presented his work in Japan, completed advanced courses in modern algebra and number theory, and took second place in the ASFM national collegiate mathematics championship in 2017. He also has co-authored three publications with university faculty.

Neville credits many U faculty for helping him through his undergraduate career. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Tommaso de Fernex,Duncan Metcalfe, Arjun Krishnan, Aditya Bhaskara, Peter Trapaand Gordan Savin were each instrumental in helping him with research, presentations, course work and advising.

Neville aspires to become a professor at a research university so he can continue working on math and sharing it with others.

“I want to give back to a community that’s given so much to me. I want to continue learning and pushing the limits of what mathematics, and hence humanity, can do,” said Neville.

The Churchill Scholarship, established in 1963 at the request of Winston Churchill, provides undergraduates with outstanding academic achievement in the science, technology, engineering and math fields the opportunity to complete a one-year Master’s program at the University of Cambridge. The award is worth about $60,000 in U.S. dollars, depending on the exchange rate.

Candidates go through a rigorous endorsement process in order to apply, but only after their home institution has been vetted with the Winston Churchill Foundation. The U was added to the Foundation in spring 2014.

The Churchill Scholarship has been called “the most academically challenging of the U.K. scholarships.”

Neville will begin his studies at Cambridge in October 2018.

Under Pressure

June 22, 2017

Scientists have solved decades long puzzle about lithium, an essential metal in cellphone and computer batteries. Using extreme pressure experiments and powerful supercomputing, the international team has unraveled the mystery of a fundamental property of lithium. Its atoms are arranged in a simple structure, and may be the first direct evidence of a quantum solid behavior in a metal.

Until now, all previous experiments have indicated that lithium’s atoms had a complex arrangement. The idea baffled theoretical physicists. With only three electrons, lithium is the lightest, simplest metal on the periodic table and should have a simple structure to match.

The new study combined theory and experimentation to discover the true structure of lithium at cold temperatures, in its lowest energy state.

Scientists suggest that rapid cooling led lithium atoms to arrange themselves in complex structure and resulted in misinterpretation of the previous experimental results. To avoid this, Shanti Deemyad, associate professor at the University of Utah who led the experimental aspect of the study, applied extreme pressure to the lithium before cooling down the samples.

Deemyad’s research group prepared the lithium samples in tiny pressure cells at the U. The group then traveled to Argonne National Laboratory to apply pressure up to 10,000 times the Earth’s atmosphere by pressing the sample between the tip of two diamonds. They then cooled and depressurized the samples, and examined the structures at low pressure and temperature using X-ray beams.

The researchers looked at two isotopes of lithium — the lighter lithium 6 and heavier lithium 7. They found that the lighter isotope behaves differently in its transitions to lower energy structures under certain thermodynamic paths than the heavier isotope, a behavior previously only seen in helium. The difference means that depending on the weight of the nuclei, there are different ways to get to the lower energy states. This is a quantum solid characteristic.

Graeme Ackland, professor from the University of Edinburgh, led the theoretical aspect of the study by running the most sophisticated calculations of lithium’s structure to date, using advanced quantum mechanics on the ARCHER supercomputer. Both experimentation and theoretical parts of the study found that lithium’s lowest energy structure is not complex or disordered, as previous results had suggested. Instead, its atoms are arranged simply, like oranges in a box.

The study, from the Universities of Edinburgh and Utah, was published in Science.

Corresponding author Deemyad of the University of Utah Department of Physics & Astronomy, said: “Our experiments revealed that lithium is the first metallic element with quantum lattice structure behavior at moderate pressures. This will open up new possibilities for rich physics.”

Co-author Miguel Martinez-Canales of the University of Edinburgh School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “Our calculations needed an accuracy of one in 10 million, and would have taken over 40 years on a normal computer.”

Lead theoretical author Graeme Ackland of the University of Edinburgh School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “We were able to form a true picture of cold lithium by making it using high pressures. Rather than forming a complex structure, it has the simplest arrangement that there can be in nature.”

Adapted from University of Edinburgh release: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2017/piling-on-pressure-solves-mystery-about-metal

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