It’s summer, it’s hot, and these atoms are going for a swim. For the first time ever, materials scientists recorded individual solid atoms moving through a liquid solution.A team of engineers ...

In a solid, the atoms are very attracted to one another. The atoms vibrate but stay in fixed positions because of their strong attractions for one another. Heating a solid increases the motion of the ...

Atoms within the enormous ball of iron in Earth's inner core may move around much more than previously thought, which could explain recent findings about the core's surprising softness.

A rare and bewildering intermediate between crystal and glass can be the most stable arrangement for some combinations of atoms, according to a study from the University of Michigan.

Since atoms don’t have a solid surface, in one sense there’s nothing to “touch,” because there’s never a situation where one boundary meets another boundary. But “touch” also conveys a sense of ...

The iron atoms that make up the Earth’s solid inner core are tightly jammed together by astronomically high pressures — the highest on the planet. But even here, there’s space for wiggle room, ...

Scientists at the University of Michigan have unlocked a long-standing mystery about quasicrystals exotic materials that straddle the line between the orderly structure of crystals and the chaos of ...

Per these models, the atoms were stuck together in a hexagonal pattern — meaning there was effectively a huge solid metal ball at the heart of our planet (the inner core), swiveling in a pool of ...

Atoms within the enormous ball of iron in Earth's inner core may move around much more than previously thought, which could explain recent findings about the core's surprising softness.