Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The "glassy state" is a sub-state of matter–glassy water and ice, for example, are chemically identical and are both solid, but have a different structure. Put another way, ice is crystalline, whereas glass is, well, chunky. Scientists know a lot about glasses that form from ordinary silicates, sugars and metals. But when water makes the transition to its glassy state, it behaves very oddly. ASU chemist C. Austen Angell has found a vital clue that helps explain water's bizarre behavior at the glass transition and gained important insights into phases of liquid water, as well. --by Nicholas Gerbis

Quick: What's the order of the planets in the solar system? It's Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, right? That's right today. But four billion years ago, Uranus and Neptune switched places. How do we know? With the help of a very Nice model, for starters. --by Nikki Staab

Scientists at ASU have developed the world's first gene detection platform made up entirely from self-assembled DNA nanostructures. The structures are made using "DNA origami" techniques to create spatially addressable nanoarrays. The work could have broad implications for gene chip technology and may also revolutionize the way in which gene expression is analyzed in a single cell. --by Joe Caspermeyer

Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to make new discoveries--like a deposit of silica--more than three years after landing. Meanwhile, NASA is planning where to send its next-generation rover, the Mars Science Laboratory. A promising site is Melas Chasma, a dried-up ancient lake that could hold evidence of microbial life.--by Robert Burnham

New research from the Deep Time Drilling Project indicates that traces of oxygen appeared in Earth's atmosphere earlier than previously thought. The discovery places the traces at 50 to 100 million years before the "Great Oxidation Event." --by Carol Hughes

For almost 40 years, the complete photographic record from the Apollo moon project sat in a freezer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Now, scientists at Arizona State University and NASA are working together to create a new digital archive. High-resolution scans of the original Apollo flight films will be available publicly on the Internet. --by Robert Burnham

Charon is very cold place. Frigid geysers spew material up through cracks in the crust of Pluto's companion world. Charon just might be the equivalent of an outer solar system ice machine, according to Jason Cook. --by Robert Burnham

Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what we can only presume to have been a primordial pool of building blocks. Inspired by this success, a new Biodesign Institute research team, led by John Chaput, is now trying to mimic the process of Darwinian evolution in the laboratory by evolving new proteins from scratch. --by Joe Caspermeyer

A mosaic image made with data from ASU's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) shows a massive landslide in the Martian canyon Noctis Labyrinthus. --by Robert Burnham

Galaxy NGC 1672 is an active star-forming galaxy in Earth's cosmic backyard. ASU astronomer Rogier Windhorst uses pictures like this Hubble image to study the birth and evolution of these giant wonders.