The rare element beryllium is mainly known for being a component of emeralds, aquamarines, and other precious stones. However, in Nature Communications, an international team of scientists from the University of Bayreuth now reports on a very unusual discovery: Under a pressure 880,000 times higher than the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere, beryllium atoms in a phosphate crystal surround themselves with six neighbouring atoms instead of the usual four. Actually, this crystal structure was theoretically predicted five decades ago, but it was only during high-pressure experiments at the Deutsches Elektronensynchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg that it has now been observed for the first time.
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Source: Phys.org