Aerosol glassy states promote global warming, airborne toxins and pathogens

该项目将提高我们对空气中颗粒物在全球气候、污染以及流感、冠状病毒和普通感冒传播中所起作用的理解。它将通过揭示最近在大气气溶胶中发现的物质的“玻璃态”的更广泛的重要性来做到这一点。玻璃态是高度不可预测的准固体，它突然形成，中断了液体到固体的转变。这种中断使液滴作为云核和感染载体的模型的平衡假设失效。我们将开发并验证一种数值工具，用于预测玻璃态的形成及其对广泛类别的气溶胶的影响，其中包括对云的形成和感染传播至关重要的颗粒。

This project will improve our understanding of the role played by airborne particles in global climate, pollution and the transmission of influenza, corona virus and the common cold. It will do so by revealing the wider importance of "glassy states" of matter recently revealed in atmospheric aerosols. Glassy states are highly unpredictable quasi solids that abruptly form, interrupting the transition of a liquid to a solid. This interruption invalidates equilibrium assumptions of models of droplets as cloud nuclei and infection vectors. We will develop and validate a numerical tool for predicting glassy state formation and its impact in broad classes of aerosol that include particles critical to cloud formation and infection transmission.