Description:
<p>A central question in the study of amorphous materials is the extent to which they are ordered. When the crystalline intermetallic R-Al$_5$Li$_3$Cu is compressed to 23.2 gigapascals at ambient temperature, an amorphous phase is produced whose order can be described as defects in a curved-space crystal. This result supports a structural relation between quasi-crystals and amorphous metals based on icosahedral ordering. This result also shows that a metallic crystal can be made amorphous by compression.</p>