Welcome to the Department of
EARTH & PLANETARY SCIENCE
University of California, Berkeley
307 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-4767
Phone: (510) 642-3993 • Fax: (510) 643-9980
EPS Research Spotlight
Over the last three years, Burkhard Militzer's group has been working on understanding water at megabar pressures with ab initio computer simulations. In the interiors of Uranus and Neptune (dashed lines in figure) where such pressures exist, water is predicted to occur in a superionic state where the oxgyen atoms remain stationary like in a solid while the hydrogen atoms diffuse throughout the crystal like a fluid. In the most recent article that appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters, postdoc Hugh Wilson, summer student Michael Wong, and Burkhard Militzer, show that, at 1.0±0.5 megabars, the oxygen sub-lattice in superionic water changes from a body-centered cubic lattice to an face-cented cubic lattice (inset). This transformation lead to a more efficient packing but also reduces the diffusion rate of the hydrogen atoms, which may have further implications for electronic conductivity and magnetic dynamo in Uranus and Neptune. This theorectical prediction is expected to be verified with laboratory experiments using shock wave and x-ray diffration techniques.
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EPS Awards and News
Apr 2013 Ryan Turner has been selected to receive the 2012 - 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award Read More...
Apr 2013 Christina Hamilton, EPS marine science, wins Haas Scholarship Read More...
Oct 2012 Professor Burgmann wins Postdoctoral Mentoring Award Read More...
Aug 2012 UC Berkeley undergraduate Ernesto Martinez returns from 3200 km scientific voyage. Read More...Jun 2012 A preview of ChronoZoom, a timeline tool that visualizes the history of the Earth, Cosmos, Life and Humanity led by Professor Walter Alvarez, is now available. Read More...
Apr 2012 Professor Barbara Romanowicz has been selected by the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate to present the 2012-13 Martin Meyerson Berkeley Faculty Research Lecture. Read More...
