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ICTP - Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
SISSA - International School of Advanced Studies
29 October 2026

Decoding the Complexity of Water

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Physicists at ICTP and SISSA in Trieste have opened a new window into the dynamics of water molecules by applying advanced causality analysis to characterise their motion. Insights on how molecules move collectively in liquids are essential to understanding how fluids flow, react and freeze.

When seeing two people move in a crowded room, one might wonder: did one of them step aside to let the other pass, or did the second person’s push make the first one step away? Watching the scene from above, there is no way to tell, but a group of researchers led by Ali Hassanali, ICTP Senior Research Scientist, and Alessandro Laio, professor at SISSA, have developed a method to tell the difference, and applied it to water molecules. Their results, which have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shed new light on water’s complex behaviour.