Imagine a plane with wings made out of glass. Thanks to a breakthrough in understanding the nature of glass by scientists at the University of Bristol, such a craft could become a possibility. Despite its solid appearance, glass is actually a "jammed" state of matter that moves very slowly. Like cars in a traffic jam, atoms in a glass can't reach their destination because the route is blocked by their neighbours. As a result, glass never quite becomes a "proper" solid. For more than 50 years, scientists have tried to understand just what glass is. Work so far has concentrated on trying to understand the traffic jam, but Paddy Royall, PhD from the University of Bristol, with colleagues in Canberra and Tokyo, has recently shown that the problem really lies with the destination. More information is available from: www.bristol.ac.uk
