{"id":219205,"date":"2025-08-01T04:27:39","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T09:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/single-salt-crystals-seen-creeping-across-surfaces-below-liquid-for-first-time"},"modified":"2025-08-01T04:27:39","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T09:27:39","slug":"single-salt-crystals-seen-creeping-across-surfaces-below-liquid-for-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/single-salt-crystals-seen-creeping-across-surfaces-below-liquid-for-first-time","title":{"rendered":"Single salt crystals seen creeping across surfaces below liquid for first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/single-salt-crystals-seen-creeping-across-surfaces-below-liquid-for-first-time2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Salt creeping, a phenomenon that occurs in both natural and industrial processes, describes the collection and migration of salt crystals from evaporating solutions onto surfaces. Once they start collecting, the crystals climb, spreading away from the solution. This creeping behavior, according to researchers, can cause damage or be harnessed for good, depending on the context.<\/p>\n<p>New research <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.langmuir.5c01460#Abstract\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> June 30 in the journal <i>Langmuir<\/i> is the first to show salt creeping at a single-crystal scale and beneath a liquid\u2019s meniscus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe work not only explains how salt creeping begins, but why it begins and when it does,\u201d says Joseph Phelim Mooney, a postdoc in the MIT Device Research Laboratory and one of the authors of the new study. \u201cWe hope this level of insight helps others, whether they\u2019re tackling <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/water+scarcity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">water scarcity<\/a>, preserving ancient murals, or designing longer-lasting infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Salt creeping, a phenomenon that occurs in both natural and industrial processes, describes the collection and migration of salt crystals from evaporating solutions onto surfaces. Once they start collecting, the crystals climb, spreading away from the solution. This creeping behavior, according to researchers, can cause damage or be harnessed for good, depending on the context. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}