For more than 50 years most scientists have tried to understand just what glass is. Dr Paddy Royall from the University of Bristol, with colleagues in Canberra and Tokyo, have revealed in an article in the June 22, issue of Nature Materials, that glass 'fails' to be a solid due to the special atomic structures that form in a glass when it cools. Knowing the structure formed by atoms as a glass cools represents a major breakthrough in our understanding of meta-stable materials and will allow further development of new materials such as metallic glasses which could be suitable for a whole range of products that need to be flexible such as aircraft wings, golf clubs and engine parts. Read more at Bristol University News