In the paper by Bulatov et al. on page 669 of this issue, five authors have joined forces across disciplines to study how collaboration of atoms results in change on large scales. They investigate the appearance of a barrier to plastic flow in a crystal, and then the destruction of the barrier. The larger significance of the work lies in providing a case study where complicated phenomena at the atomic scale are transformed into quantitative accounts of the whirlpools and vortices that allow metals to deform.
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