Materials science

Researchers thought that what enabled complex fluids to break apart was their elasticity. But a crack in a nonelastic simple fluid has them questioning that idea.

Scientists keep detecting new forms of ice. According to simulations, there could be many more left to find.

A newly proposed explanation for the slipperiness of ice has revived a centuries-long debate.

New studies of the ‘platypus of materials’ help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into orderly, but nonrepeating, patterns.

Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.

The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.

Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align.

For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart.