The melting of materials seems like a simple phenomenon. However, when their thickness is reduced to just a few atoms, ...

New research offers clearer insight into how phase transitions unfold at the atomic scale in real materials. When ice turns into water, the change happens almost instantly. Once the melting ...

Human history is not governed by thermodynamic laws. Still, the vocabulary of metastability, tipping points, and critical ...

After decades of looking, researchers have seen a string of atoms go through a 1D phase change so elusive that it could only happen inside a quantum simulator. “One motivation [for our experiment] is ...

The effects of cycles of compression and relaxation during Earth’s early lifetime can be studied using a combination of fast ...

Phase changes -- Stability and instability -- Bifurcations and catastrophes -- Percolation -- Random graphs -- Life origins -- Virus dynamics -- Cell structure ...

Both a wildfire and activity of digital “neurons” exhibit a phase transition from an active to an absorbing phase. Once a system reaches an absorbing phase, it cannot escape from it without outside ...

Researchers from the University of Tokyo in collaboration with Aisin Corporation have demonstrated that universal scaling laws, which describe how the properties of a system change with size and scale ...