Retiring the Kauzmann paradox—a call to focus future glass research elsewhere
Knowing when to call it quits is not just a struggle for people in romantic relationships. Any relationship or activity you’ve invested time, money, and energy into is hard to step away from, especially if you previously benefitted from it.
In the scientific community, researchers often face the hard choice of continuing or ending investigations into different hypotheses or theories. The decision can be complicated when the hypothesis or theory is widely known and referenced, or it helped spark studies that led to great discoveries.
In glass research, one hypothesis that has sparked decades of debate is the Kauzmann paradox. Initially proposed in the 1940s by a U.S. chemist who was simply sharing his ponderings, the controversial conjecture has inspired hundreds of follow-up papers in a variety of scientific disciplines.