We tend to look for order in nature. It’s an idea that pervades all of physics. Disorder at high temperature gives way to symmetry breaking and order at low temperature. It’s an outlook that Lev Landau introduced more than half a century ago, and that several generations beautifully treated, to explain the associated phase transitions. It seems to make sense. But what can we say rigorously about order and disorder? A recent Reference Frame column by Jim Langer on the mysterious glass transition (Physics Today, February 2007, page 8) points out that in most cases a glass is not a thermodynamic equilibrium state. But can it ever be? Can there be an “ideal” glass, a random state that is thermodynamically stable? We believe that simple equilibrium systems have to order. It’s our prejudice, or as Daniel Fisher puts it, “It’s a religion.”
A similar and related problem...
