Research Takes UT Faculty and Students to the Extreme
The mysteries of science entice UT research faculty to seek new discoveries in some of the world’s most extreme environments. Their fascinations might lead them to probe the ice fields of Antarctica to expand interplanetary possibilities, scoop up remnants of ancient undersea volcanoes to predict future impact, or break open the subatomic world to better understand how everything is put together.
These unique journeys redefine how science tackles big problems. UT experts collaborate around the world to drive innovation that makes life and lives better, in Tennessee and beyond. These projects also open opportunities for undergraduate and graduate Volunteers to launch their own careers equipped with practical experiences and skills beyond the classroom.
Welcome to the Cryosphere
Microbiology Professor Jill Mikucki studies how microbial life interacts with its environment and how its impact can be detected throughout an ecosystem. Environments isolated deep under glaciers—Earth’s cryosphere—offer model situations for the study of these processes, far from the milling crowds more complex ecosystems on our planet’s surface.
She visits these frozen zones—Alaska, Greenland, Antarctica, and others—to learn more about the Earth and to help develop machines that can successfully explore other icy worlds. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research (PSTAR) program, along with UT’s Office of Research, Innovation, and Development (ORIED), help fund their work to ensure that the ice-melting probes work effectively while not contaminating the samples they collect or the ecosystems they visit.
Planning ahead is vital.
“You’re trying to run a science lab on top of a glacier,” said Mikucki. “We’re always dealing with temperature extremes—doing science in a tent.”
In addition to lab equipment, her team needs gear that allows them to not only survive, but function and work in the extreme cold.
“When we go to Antarctica, we need four-season tents that have proper insulation, things like that,” she said. “Because I study subglacial lakes and brines, we’re dealing with the potential of being wet while we are taking samples. Having the right waterproof gloves are definitely a concern.”
Water and ice are not the only dangers that can emerge from deep below.
“In Canada we went to what is called a glaciovolcanic fumarole system—a glacier on top of a volcanic system,” said Mikucki. “There are heated soils with fumarole gasses coming out that are highly toxic, high-end hydrogen sulfides, just really dangerous. It was mind-blowing to see this contrast of heat and ice and toxic gasses. The extreme nature of some of these systems—I haven’t even begun to see the diversity of icy ecosystems out there.”
UT students often get to go along on these chilly adventures to test the ice probes, and others follow up with rigorous analysis back on campus.
“For me, getting my students out there is key,” said Mikucki. “They’ve been wonderful at diving into the materials we have in the lab, but seeing and working out of a freezer is very different than getting in the field and seeing what the actual challenges are, what your samples mean in context, and as part of workforce development. My goal is to find a way to make more opportunities as I can.”
Set Sail for Ancient Volcanoes
While Mikucki occasionally encounters volcanic activity under the ice, Professor Molly McCanta of the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences sets sail to specifically track down evidence of ancient volcanoes to learn what these scenes can tell us for predicting future eruptions and their impacts. The research takes her to exotic places like the Aegean Sea off the coast of Greece.
“We’re on the ocean, sometimes well away from land, not seeing anything, and drilling deep under the ocean water and deep into the sea floor,” she said. “We extract the rocks that are down there and in some cases drill in the middle of the volcanic caldera itself. We’re trying to look at the rocks that are in there so that we can understand when there will be an eruption next.”
Over time, layers of sediment “lock in” the volcanic evidence, so core samples drawn from under the sea floor offer remarkably complete records of eruptions and inter-eruption intervals.
“That’s the great benefit of going through the trouble to look under the water. We cannot access this dataset in any other way,” said McCanta. “The geological materials we collect are often not found on land due to erosion, time, or they are covered up by new eruptions. The results often change our understanding of eruptive hazards, eruption intervals, and types of eruptions.”
The challenges in retrieving samples from the ocean floor start with just keeping the boat in one place—a task that relies on a relatively calm day at sea and a system of 12 computer-controlled engines that steady the ship within a very tight margin of error.
“You have this long metal drill stem that is only a couple of tens of centimeters in width attached to this ship, and then it’s now being drilled into the sediment below it,” said McCanta. “And there are waves. The ship can’t move, or it’s going to snap the drill stem.”
Over the years these expeditions have given numerous students opportunities to practice their research skills on the high seas and back home in the lab as they work toward master’s degrees and doctorates.
“Students learn to use new types of analytical equipment that specifically relates to geochemical characterization—the scanning electron microscope, visible-near infrared spectrometer, or electron microprobe,” said McCanta. “They get the chance to work on characterizing materials that no one else has ever worked on.”
Deep Dive into Atoms
Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor Christine Nattrass doesn’t travel to icy glaciers or out to sea for her research in experimental nuclear physics, but the subatomic world offers its own challenging environments. At extreme conditions of temperature and density, nuclear matter transitions from relatively familiar groupings of protons and neutrons into a liquid of deconfined quarks and gluons.
A very specific set of tools are needed to peer into this sub-nucleic level. For Nattrass, this means the massive Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Connecticut’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and its newly upgraded sPHENIX detector.
“To measure very small things, you have to have very large detectors,” said Nattrass. “You accelerate nuclei very fast so that they are very close to the speed of light, then you smash them together and they briefly melt.”
This collision produces temperatures roughly a million times hotter than the core of the Sun, a level of heat required to melt nuclear matter into a state of quark-gluon plasma. Like a highly specialized camera, the sPHENIX detector looks through this extreme heat to record valuable data about the particles—their type, momentum, and energy. The process helps tell the story of some of the smallest matter in existence.
“Quarks and gluons are point particles, so we don’t think they have any size,” said Nattrass. “We’ve never been able to smash a quark or gluon or an electron and see that it goes into anything smaller.”
This deep inside look keeps researchers like Nattrass at the forefront of nuclear physics and also leads to beneficial new technology.
“By doing things like this—and I think this is also true of what my colleagues are doing in completely different fields—you’re moving the boundary of what’s possible,” said Nattrass. “So often you don’t know what you can do with certain technologies until you develop them. High-energy physics has led to much cheaper particle detectors, which are used in medical imaging. Smoke detectors work through a radioactive decay.”
One of the most immediate benefits is the training her students receive in practical skills for STEM fields like data science and more.
“There is no industry for production of the quark-gluon plasma, but all of my students get snapped up and hired, because we teach them analytical skills,” said Nattrass. “I’ve had more than 40 undergraduate students working in my group in the last 10 years. Participation in undergraduate research increases retention and graduation rates, and it also develops concrete skills.”
From the Rocky Top campus throughout Earth’s most extreme environments, these pioneering minds engage with curious students to conduct groundbreaking research to deliver world-changing results and influence the future of research across natural sciences, mathematics, and beyond.
By Randall Brown