![]() By probing the sodium with x-rays, scientists could see that its atoms had adopted a complex crystal formation instead of a simple one. At 20,000 times the pressure present at the Earth’s surface, sodium transformed from a silvery block into a transparent material, one that did not conduct electricity but rather prevented its flow. For a long time, researchers believed that they could easily predict what might occur to such crystalline structures under pressure.īut around 15 years ago, scientists discovered that sodium-a metal with similar properties to potassium-did something strange when compressed. When shaped into a solid bar, the element’s atoms link up into orderly rows that conduct heat and electricity well. Metals like potassium are fairly straightforward on a microscopic level. ![]() Find out the origins of our home planet and some of the key ingredients that help make this blue speck in space a unique global ecosystem. ![]() Similar simulations could help study the behaviors of other minerals in such extreme environments.Įarth is the only planet known to maintain life. The unusual state of potassium could exist under conditions found in Earth’s mantle, but the element is generally not found in a pure form and is usually bound up with other material. “It would be like holding a sponge filled with water that starts dripping out, except the sponge is also made of water,” says study coauthor Andreas Hermann, a condensed matter physicist at the University of Edinburgh whose team describes the work this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. If you were somehow able to pull out a chunk of such material, it would probably look like a solid block leaking molten potassium that eventually all dissolved away. Now, a team has used a type of artificial intelligence to confirm the existence of a bizarre new state of matter, one in which potassium atoms exhibit properties of both a solid and a liquid at the same time. Solid, liquid, gas … and something else? While most of us learn about just three states of matter in elementary school, physicists have discovered several exotic varieties that can exist under extreme temperature and pressure conditions.
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