The machine should help clarify the mystery of glass, which is a puzzling state where matter is more like a liquid than a solid. Physicists want to better understand what happens to the atoms in a material when it transitions from a liquid to a glass.

 

We often think of glass simply as the stuff that's in our windows, but it's actually a phase of matter, like a gas, a liquid or a solid. All liquids can become glasses, but some more easily than others.

 

"We've used glasses since 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, but we still don’t understand the process – how it goes from a liquid to a glass," said physicist Kenneth Kelton of Washington University in St. Louis. "It's one of the most interesting dynamical processes anywhere around."