Defying Laws of Nature, Scientists Force 'Supercrystals' Into Existence

[Judi Lynn]

By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | March 25, 2019 01:10pm ET

A team of physicists used lasers to create "supercrystals," even as the structures fought to not exist at all.

Their accomplishment: frustrating a highly ordered material's attempts to form simpler structures and then using the energy of laser pulses to pop the frustrated material into a more complex, supercrystal state.

In materials science, matter can exist in any number of different crystalline and noncrystalline states. And sometimes, when that matter passes from one state to the next, it briefly stops over in an intermediate state that doesn't normally exist in nature. Among these exotic, fleeting states? Supercrystal structures. [What's That? Your Physics Questions Answered]

A crystal is a material whose atoms or molecules have arranged themselves into a repeating pattern. Each step in that pattern, each puzzle piece making up the crystal, is called a unit cell. These so-called supercrystals are special because the units of their crystalline structure are far larger than those found in any natural crystals — in this case, up to a million times larger than the crystals normally formed by the chemicals that make up the supercrystal.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/65066-supercrystals-created.html

[House of Roberts]

1. Sounds like dilithium to me.

Warp drive, here we come!

[California_Republic]

2. Sometimes I worry they will start some Metaphysical super wild fire and destroy the world