Tuesday, March 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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For Las Vegas, the touchdown of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars was a source of both national and community pride.
Two UNLV geoscientists are part of the team that will determine where the rover collects rock samples and then will examine those samples for any signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. UNLV associate professor Arya Udry is among the 13 scientists who will help the rover distinguish between the type of rocks that are the most valuable to researchers — magmatic rocks, which are formed when lava cools — and other varieties. Associate professor Libby Hausrath is part of the team that will examine data recorded on the collected samples by Perseverance’s on-board instruments to determine which rocks to retain.
The samples, about the size of a stick of chalk, will be the first brought back to Earth when they’re collected from Perseverance in a future mission. They’ll be examined for biosignatures, or substances such as elements, isotopes or molecules that provide scientific evidence of life.
Las Vegas researchers looking for life on Mars — now there was a reason to cheer extra-loud when Perseverance landed Feb. 19.
But actually, UNLV has been generating a lot of fist-pumping moments in recent months.
Ashkan Salamat, an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy at UNLV, wowed the science world in October when, as part of a team led by Ranga Dias of the University of Rochester, he helped proved that superconductivity of electricity could be reached at room temperature.
The breakthrough had significant implications in the efficiency of power grids and electrical products, because regular conductivity results in electrical energy being lost as heat as it travels through power lines and wires. With superconductivity, on the other hand, electrical resistance vanishes and energy flows freely without being lost as heat. Superconductivity has been observed for decades but only at exceedingly cold temperatures, but Salamat and the team achieved it at a temperature of 59 degrees by conducting through a compound ofhydrogen, carbon and sulfur at extremely high pressures.
The pressure involved was so enormous that it rules out any practical application of the technology, but the discovery opens the door to further advancement and sparks big dreams of such things as zero-loss power lines and frictionless high-speed trains.
“It’s clearly a landmark,” a University of Cambridge materials scientist told Wired. “That’s a chilly room, maybe a British Victorian cottage.”
Another recent accomplishment at UNLV is also worth celebrating — the medical school achieving full accreditation.
Combined with the new classroom building that is under construction on the school’s Shadow Ridge campus, the accreditation puts the school on track to expanding to its original vision of 120-member classes per year, and will help fill the need for high-quality health care in Southern Nevada. The state-of-the-art, 128,000-square-foot building promises to supercharge the medical school’s research and become a magnet for health care providers and researchers to the medical complex.
UNLV’s campus is quiet these days because of the coronavirus, but electrifying things are happening at the university.
This shouldn’t be lost on Nevada lawmakers as they consider funding for higher education during this year’s legislative session. Not only is UNLV a fine academic institution that offers an accessible and affordable postsecondary option for students, but its status as a research institution is burgeoning. With three years of achieving prestigious Carnegie R1 status (as in research), joining a list of 120 colleges that includes Yale, Harvard and Stanford, UNLV’s researchers are making great strides for the university and our community. To lawmakers, there’s a crystal clear message here: An investment in higher education is well-justified.
