An artificial intelligence that can predict how a piece of glass responds to heat and pressure could one day also be used to model traffic flow.

While most solid materials have a regular atomic structure, the atoms in glass have a more irregular arrangement, resembling a liquid that has been frozen in place. Physicists have long wanted to know more about this “ glass transition ”.

“Given that glasses are everywhere – from windows to your phone screen – it’s odd that we don’t really understand its structure and dynamism,” says Victor Bapst at AI firm DeepMind. …