{"id":232430,"date":"2026-03-03T01:23:53","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/scientists-unveil-universal-aging-mechanism-in-glassy-materials"},"modified":"2026-03-03T01:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:23:53","slug":"scientists-unveil-universal-aging-mechanism-in-glassy-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/scientists-unveil-universal-aging-mechanism-in-glassy-materials","title":{"rendered":"Scientists unveil universal aging mechanism in glassy materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-unveil-universal-aging-mechanism-in-glassy-materials3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cGlass\u201d has a unique and distinct meaning in physics\u2014one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and continues to change extremely slowly over time. Examples include window glass, plastics, metallic glasses, spin glasses (i.e., magnetic systems), and even some biological and computational systems.<\/p>\n<p>When a liquid is cooled very quickly\u2014a process called quenching\u2014it doesn\u2019t have time to organize into a crystal but becomes stuck in a disordered state far from equilibrium. Its properties\u2014like stiffness and structure\u2014slowly evolve through a process called \u201caging.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, a research team from the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a new theoretical framework for understanding the universal aging behavior of glassy materials. The study is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aec4416\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Science Advances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cGlass\u201d has a unique and distinct meaning in physics\u2014one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and continues to change extremely slowly over time. Examples include window glass, plastics, metallic glasses, spin glasses (i.e., [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1523,269,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-computing","category-life-extension","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232430","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=232430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}