Many solid materials "remember" their past. A piece of metal may respond differently after being stretched, heated, or cooled, and memory materials rely precisely on this kind of history-dependent ...

University of Illinois physicists have created a bootstrapping framework that classifies non-equilibrium mixed-state quantum phases of matter, fixing flaws in existing methods and opening new routes ...

Active particles can form two-dimensional solids that are different from those formed by nonmotile particles, showing long-range crystalline order accompanied by giant spontaneous deformations. Figure ...

In everyday life, all matter exists as either a gas, liquid, or solid. In quantum mechanics, however, it is possible for two distinct states to exist simultaneously. An ultracold quantum system, for ...

Meteorites preserve fragments of the earliest solid materials that formed around the young Sun. The Solar System began as a cloud of dust and gas called the solar nebula — the Sun formed at the centre ...