When David Farrelly sets off next summer from northeastern Spain on the Way of St. James, he’ll join thousands of pilgrims who walk from distant origins each year to Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela. Known in Spanish as El Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage shares the popular vernacular name for the Milky Way which, according to medieval legend, was formed from dust raised by pilgrims’ feet.

As an enthusiastic inquirer of the physical universe, it seems fitting that the Utah State University professor participates in the centuries-old tradition.

 

Farrelly travels to Spain in September to spend a sabbatical year as a guest of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education. The ministry awarded him a visiting professorship to conduct research at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His research is also supported by the United States’ National Science Foundation.

 

“The Spanish government is investing heavily in science and encouraging international collaborations,” says Farrelly, who joined USU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1991.

 

During his stay in Spain, Farrelly will rekindle collaborations he established with Spanish colleagues during his postdoc years in Colorado. In addition to his work in Madrid, he’ll pursue research with associates at the University of La Rioja in Logroño and the University of Santiago de Compostela.

 

“We’re studying quantum theory of how molecules come together, how bonds break and how they form new bonds,” says Farrelly, whose research focuses on chemical dynamics.

 

Of particular interest to he and colleagues is how chemical reactions on surfaces can be manipulated. “How can you alter a chemical reaction?” he asks. “For example, can you tune conditions so that a molecule reacts in a particular, desired way?”

 

Another project Farrelly plans to pursue during his sabbatical is computational research on superfluid nano-droplets of liquid helium. Using high vacuum equipment, researchers insert water molecules, one at a time, into helium droplets. This cools the molecules to absolute zero, enabling a process by which small water clusters grow and can be directly observed.

 

“Water is a remarkable material with odd properties,” he says. “It really should be a gas at room temperature. The reason water has such weird properties is because of its hydrogen bonds.”

 

Because hydrogen bonds are vital to so many biological processes, investigation of droplet formation at the microscopic level has many implications, Farrelly says.

 

Yet another project Farrelly plans to pursue during his Iberian sojourn involves his longtime interest in astonomy. He and associates will study the dynamics of recently discovered binary objects in the Kuiper belt – a region that exists at the far reaches of our solar system. The region encodes valuable information, he says, about the primordial solar system.

 

“We’re investigating how these celestial bodies lose energy as they form pairs,” Farrelly says. “As they come in contact with each other and larger bodies they’re caught in a tug of war. They’re attracted to each other gravitationally, while being torn apart by solar gravity. They either collide, get trapped or escape.”

 

What fascinates Farrelly is the mechanism, involving chaos theory, by which asteroids, moons and other minor planets lose and gain energy. Back in 2003, he, USU doctoral student Sergey Astakhov and collaborators at Britain’s Bristol University published findings in Nature of their studies of Jupiter and Saturn’s capture of multiple, irregular moons.

 

“We tend to think of chaos as not being constructive, yet these objects show that order can emerge not just from chaos but because of chaos,” he says. “It’s the same at the molecular level. How do atoms gain and lose energy? How do they come together and break apart?”

 

 

Contact: David Farrelly [davidfarrelly@yahoo.com], 435-797-1608
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto [maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu], 435-797-1429

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