What's up in
crystals
Latest Articles
Ideal Glass Would Explain Why Glass Exists at All
Glass is anything that’s rigid like a crystal, yet made of disordered molecules like a liquid. To understand why it exists, researchers are attempting to create the perfect, still-hypothetical “ideal glass.”
Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Snowflakes
Snow crystals come in two main types. The “pope” of snowflake physics has a new theory that explains why.
Black, Hot Ice May Be Nature’s Most Common Form of Water
A new experiment confirms the existence of “superionic ice,” a bizarre form of water that might comprise the bulk of giant icy planets throughout the universe.
A Chemist Shines Light on a Surprising Prime Number Pattern
When a crystallographer treated prime numbers as a system of particles, the resulting diffraction pattern created a new view of existing conjectures in number theory.
Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter
Glass and other strange materials have long confounded textbook definitions of what it means to be solid. Now, two groups of physicists propose a new solution to the riddle.