A scientific discovery by researchers at Tel Aviv University’s School of Chemistry offers a new perspective on a long-standing scientific mystery: how does a flowing liquid suddenly become a rigid, almost frozen material, without changing its structure? This phenomenon, known as the “glass transition,” has puzzled physicists for over a hundred years. The study proposes a new experimental approach to observing this elusive process—by tracking the motion of tiny particles that serve as microscopic “sensors” within the material.

The study was conducted by Prof. Haim Diamant and Prof. Yael Roichman of the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, together with the research group of Prof. Stefan Egelhaaf at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. The findings were published in the journal Nature Physics.

Recent research led by the University of Trento reveals that fundamental atomic vibrations remain unchanged also in ultra-stable glasses. This discovery advances the decade-long debate on the physics of disorder and opens the way to new applications, from electronics to pharmaceuticals. The research work was carried out by the Department of Physics in collaboration with other European research institutions and published in Physical Review X.

We are used to thinking of glass as a fragile and common material, but glass is still one of the greatest enigmas for physics. In crystals, atoms are arranged in geometric order, while chaos reigns in glass. This disorder generates unique properties, especially near absolute zero, where the glass behaves very differently from crystals. A study conducted by the Department of Physics of the University of Trento in collaboration with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble and other European research centers sheds new light on this mystery.

The working group analyzed the so-called ultra-stable glasses, which are produced with advanced techniques that make them perfect candidates for the title of “ideal glass.” The first author of the paper is Irene Festi, who worked on the project for her Ph.D. thesis at the Department of Physics of the University of Trento. Giacomo Baldi, professor of Experimental Physics of Matter and head of the Laboratory of Structure and Dynamics of Complex Systems at the same Department of UniTrento, is the scientific coordinator of the study.