Wiktionary
a. (context physics chemistry English) Of or pertaining to a physical or chemical state that is relatively long-lived, but may decay to a lower energy state when slightly perturbed or through a quantum transition.
WordNet
adj. (of physical systems) continuing in its present state of equilibrium unless sufficiently disturbed to pass to a more stable state of equilibrium
Usage examples of "metastable".
Right now you can establish metastable DataPipes between two fixed points.
He was a very smart guy, Ornstein had to admit, but at first the Honeywell man refused to admit that a metastable state was possible in the machine.
The fleeting trace was perhaps the only telltale sign that the crashes were caused by a timing problem: a synchronizer stalled in a metastable condition for a few nanoseconds too long.
They are metastable, and will eventually convert to graphite -- but this takes hundreds of millions of years, so on human time scales diamond behaves like an ordinary stable solid.
It was looping, it seemed, on a strange metastable orbit that caused it to fly, on decades-long trajectories, back and forth between the two stars.
The birds were small, barely larger than my hand, but the metastable atomic hydrogen that filled them held an incredible amount of explosive power.
Salzburg feeling, the aura of a sophisticated ancient city, wrapped in a glisteningly pure blanket of snow, under siege, faced with the daily onslaught of an unseen army that seemed to have an unlimited supply of coilguns and metastable hydrogen.
August sun, with all Europe trembling in metastable balance under the fast-unfolding wings of Chaos.
Your creators wanted to increase the lifetime of a metastable bound state.
Like a metastable solution, it awaited only the slightest tap to crystallize into violence.
Caliphate mathematical technique to establish a metastable equilibrium that allows convex regions with real and virtual histories to coexist in four-dimensional space-time, while remaining both topologically distinct and contiguous in five-space.
And the behavior of a single hydrogen atom is quite different from that of the bi-atomic hydrogen molecule in all of its different spin states, metastable states, et cetera.
Caliphate mathematical technique to establish a metastable equilibrium that allows convex regions with real and virtual histories to coexist in four-dimensional space-time, while remaining both topologically distinct and contiguous in five-space.
Tolland and Corky had been discussing these metallic chondrules for some time now, talking in scientific terms well over Rachel's head—equilibrated olivine levels, metastable glass matrices, and metamorphic rehomogenation.
Your creators wanted to increase the lifetime of a metastable bound state.