According to Science Daily, scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have discovered a way that could be vital for building skyscrapers on sand, understanding how grains were stored in silos, or how drugs were packed and delivered to specific targets in the body.

Saadatfar said “sand is one of the most common building materials in the world and drugs are often packed in the forms of pills, but we really don't understand how assembly of grains or pills behave.”

The international team of physicists and mathematicians used high-resolution CT scans to reveal how spherical particles in a disordered arrangement settle and compact themselves into ordered patterns.

"Now we believe that we have uncovered the mechanisms underlying the transition from disordered packing of grains to ordered structures," he said.

He added “"Whenever spheres -- such as soccer balls, ball bearings or atoms -- are packed into a space, the most efficient packing is in a very ordered pattern, known as face-centred cubic. Sodium and chloride atoms in salt crystals are also arranged and ordered that way."

When organised that way, the spheres had a minimum of gaps between them, taking up just over 74 per cent of the space, Dr Saadatfar said.

“That's because it's hard to move to the perfectly ordered structure. It requires breaking the disordered patterns that developed naturally and that are mechanically robust.”

The team used the relatively new field of mathematics known as homology to interpret 3D x-ray microscope images and large-scale computer simulations.