UNLV physicist joins elite national research team

Monday, Aug. 26, 2002 | 10:35 a.m.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas physics professor Malcolm Nicol has joined an elite team of researchers that is putting a new high-intensity X-ray beam through its paces.

The scientists are using the year-old Advanced Photon Source in Chicago to break new ground in the study of how extreme heat and intense pressure affect a variety of materials -- from bacteria to metals.

It's the latest coup for the university, which is striving to move into the ranks of premiere research institutions.

"That's a real exciting one," UNLV Provost Ray Alden said of the partnership with the Argonne National Laboratory, where the photon ray is located. "It's the only place in the world where such experiments can be done, and (UNLV) is a part of it."

Nicol and his High Pressure Science and Engineering Center are working with research heavy hitters at Argonne, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory.

"This area is one of the few places where UNLV is a major player," Nicol said.

The consortium, called the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team, hopes its work will lay a foundation to help answer such questions as how the Earth formed, how to make food safer and how to check nuclear weapons without full-scale underground experiments.

The research is based on the fact that pressure and heat can transform matter under conditions that scientists have never been able to study in a laboratory.

Nicol, a physicist, is one of a half-dozen scientists who will oversee the experiments.

"The beam line at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago is the brightest X-ray unit available in the world," Alden said. The unit has been running less than a year, and it's up to the team of scientists to see what the new equipment is capable of doing.

"A year from now we are confident we will have created the world's best high pressure facility," Nicol said.

By using the latest technology, university researchers hope to unlock the secret to the makeup of matter at high temperatures, said Nicol's colleague, associate professor William Culbreth, a mechanical engineer at UNLV.

"It may help explain how the 'Big Bang' occurred," Culbreth said. The "Big Bang" theory holds that the universe began with an explosion of dense matter.

To give an idea of the power locked in Argonne's beam, Nicol explained, the surface of the Earth has an atmosphere of 1, the ocean floor has an atmosphere of 100 and the center of the Earth an atmosphere of 5 million.

The effect of those high pressures combined with extreme heat are familiar enough: At 50,000 atmospheres at 2,000 degrees Celsius, carbon changes to diamonds on Earth.

The Argonne beam will allow researchers to see the effect of the pressure of at least 50,000 atmospheres on various materials. Researchers don't yet know the full ability of the X-ray beam.

They do know the beam can look at nuclear weapons, which are not being tested, to see if they are stable, Alden said.

"No matter how focused or esoteric the research sounds, a lot of basic principles still need to be explained," he said.

The research could have applications from the everyday to the scientifically sublime.

Special high-pressure techniques could be developed to preserve food. The Japanese are doing experiments already to kill dangerous germs without killing flavor.

Researchers also could develop ways to probe the heart of an atom or bacteria living on the ocean's floor, combining gem-quality diamonds and X-rays to focus the beam.

The research also involves testing nuclear weapons and nuclear waste, since changes in their metals can occur over time, Nicol said, especially in a hot, pressurized environment, such as a nuclear waste repository proposed at Yucca Mountain.

The beam works by sending electrons whirling at almost the speed of light, passing though magnets to keep them in orbit. The electrons emit high energy almost as intense as a laser beam.

The brighter X-rays cut experiment time from hours into minutes on samples of materials 10,000 times smaller than scientists would normally use in a laboratory, Nicol said.

The photon source is not cheap. It cost $1 billion to build Argonne's, paid mostly by the Energy Department. Japan and France also have such equipment.

"It is not something you can build in anybody's back yard," Nicol said.

The Navy is interested in research on energetic materials that explode or boost a shuttle into orbit in solid rocket propellant. "One to 20 sailors die every year because explosives explode for unknown reasons," Nicol said. Understanding how they behave under pressure or heat could be crucial.

"We have that human side to be concerned about," he said.

Many scientists believe there is no need to resume full-scale underground nuclear weapons tests, unless new weapons are designed, Nicol said.

The Argonne photon source could answer many questions as to what happens to parts of a nuclear weapon in the stockpile.

"We hope they (nuclear weapons) won't have to be tested," Nicol said, despite some recent comments from Bush administration officials that nuclear experiments could resume at the Nevada Test Site within years.