{"id":242926,"date":"2026-08-20T05:22:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/soft-vibrations-reveal-warning-signs-before-granular-crystals-yield"},"modified":"2026-08-20T05:22:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:22:05","slug":"soft-vibrations-reveal-warning-signs-before-granular-crystals-yield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/soft-vibrations-reveal-warning-signs-before-granular-crystals-yield","title":{"rendered":"Soft vibrations reveal warning signs before granular crystals yield"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/soft-vibrations-reveal-warning-signs-before-granular-crystals-yield.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sand, powders, and other collections of visible-sized grains are found throughout daily life, from food and pharmaceuticals to soils and industrial materials. When grains of similar size are arranged regularly, they can form a strong crystal-like solid. Yet what happens inside such an ordered structure immediately before it begins to break has remained unclear.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Osaka, Shimane University, and Kyoto Sangyo University have now theoretically identified an unusual pattern of vibrations that emerges just before a crystal made of regularly arranged grains yields. Many vibrational modes soften simultaneously along particular directions, while long-wavelength waves travel more slowly than shorter ones. The findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/3lnj-1ml1\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review E<\/i>, reveal a possible physical precursor to failure in highly ordered particulate materials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sand, powders, and other collections of visible-sized grains are found throughout daily life, from food and pharmaceuticals to soils and industrial materials. When grains of similar size are arranged regularly, they can form a strong crystal-like solid. Yet what happens inside such an ordered structure immediately before it begins to break has remained unclear. Researchers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242926","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=242926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}