A river meanders lazily through the plains but, in rocky terrain, might tumble rapidly down as a waterfall, sometimes in multiple cascades. Charles Darwin had earlier proposed that changes in the characteristics of organisms happen very slowly over time and generations, just like the river’s gentle flow.
Two new studies from the Indian Institute of Bombay (IIT Bombay), Mumbai, show the importance of defects in the arrangement of atoms in a crystal, called dislocations, in shaping the physical properties of metallic alloys.
By Dennis C J
Mumbai/ Mar 11, 2023