Scientists think that they might have discovered a new category of solids. It’s called q-glass. Attention science-minded hip hop artists: Please claim this name.
There’s no hard evidence yet, but scientists say they have discovered a substance that may represent a whole new category of solids.
Dubbed q-glass, the newly observed substance seems to fall into neither of two familiar categories of solids–conventional crystals or glasses. Nor does it seem to belong to a more esoteric family of solids that physicists call quasicrystals.
“Strangest material I ever saw,” one of the researchers behind the discovery, Dr. Lyle Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md., said in a written statement. “It’s amazing. Everything you can think about this thing behaves like a crystal, except it isn’t.”