Samarium Hexaboride Crystal baffles physicists

[silent thunder]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150702-paradoxical-crystal-baffles-physicists/

 

Exhibiting the properties of metal and insulator in one crystal, Samarium Hexaboride is rather baffling...

 

 

The material, a much-studied compound called samarium hexaboride or SmB₆, is an insulator at very low temperatures, meaning it resists the flow of electricity. Its resistance implies that electrons (the building blocks of electric currents) cannot move through the crystal more than an atom’s width in any direction. And yet, Sebastian and her collaborators observed electrons traversing orbits millions of atoms in diameter inside the crystal in response to a magnetic field — a mobility that is only expected in materials that conduct electricity. Calling to mind the famous wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics, the new evidence suggests SmB₆ might be neither a textbook metal nor an insulator, Sebastian said, but “something more complicated that we don’t know how to imagine.”

 

[Nungali]

Fascinating!  What happens when under pressure ?   Some type of piezoelectric charge ?  

 

Oh look ! Its a Tree of Life in Four Worlds, within the 'Cube of Space'   ! 

 

 

http://www.bio360.net/attachments/2013/01/13573780937daf6f78187acca1.jpg

[Nungali]

... another 3 /4   and while I was looking at that and realizing ; there is a festival across the road going on with  a sound stage and a band  .... 3 /4