A new study reveals that highly disordered indium oxide superconductors undergo a first-order quantum phase transition — a sudden shift from a superconducting to an insulating state. This finding is ...

Critical awakening: physicists have found evidence of a continuous phase transition in brain activity. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Phonlamai-Photo) Further evidence that ...

Usually, when materials heat up, they become more disordered. Now, researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands have found evidence for the opposite happening in the element neodymium, which ...

Based on fractal patterns in neurons, researchers believe our brains exist at or near a state called criticality where they're extremely close to shifting from one state of matter to another. They ...

Physicists with the U.S. Department of Energy have discovered a new phase of matter—and, with apologies to George R. R. Martin, it's something of "a song of ice and fire." The new phase comes in the ...

What happened shortly after the universe was born in the Big Bang and began to expand? Bubbles occurred and a previously unknown phase transition happened, according to particle physicists. Think of ...

Phase changes -- Stability and instability -- Bifurcations and catastrophes -- Percolation -- Random graphs -- Life origins -- Virus dynamics -- Cell structure ...