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HALF SPINS. ‘Haldane, meanwhile, was busy applying the concept of topology to chains of magnetic atoms. These atoms have a quantum property known as spin, and in 1982, he predicted that certain chains of the atoms could show topological properties that result in half spins at either end. Because this quantum property depends on the collective action of the whole chain, rather than on any individual particle, similar phenomena are now being explored as robust ways to encode information in a quantum computer.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

NOBEL LAUREATES. “But Thouless and Kosterlitz showed that topological phase transitions — in which a material switches between states with different topologies — were possible in thin layers of materials. Using this model they demonstrated that, in theory, superconductivity could occur at low temperatures, but that it would disappear at higher temperatures. They also explained the mechanism that would make the effect vanish.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

2D EXOTIC MATTER. “Atoms in different phases of matter — such as a solid, liquid or gas — have characteristic kinds of order. In the 1970s, researchers believed that order in a 2D material was impossible, because thermal fluctuations would destroy any ordering, even at temperatures close to absolute zero.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

STRANGE MATTER. “Just as a knot tied in an unbroken circle of string cannot be removed without cutting the string, topological properties tend to be robust. For example, vortices in a fluid are easy to move around but harder to destroy. “Because of topology, they’re protected. They cannot be simply removed.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

NOBEL WINNERS. “In different ways, they showed how the concept of topology could give rise to new forms of matter that hadn’t previously been understood,” says Nigel Cooper, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

I met a local clockmaker who woke up one morning in his forties, and determined that he wanted to become a clockmaker, and after schooling, he became one. A lovely story about a curious conversion of an uneducated man into a technical master. View in LinkedIn

AN OVERPRINTED LANDSCAPE. “Mountains are ephemeral, and the history of mountain building has been constantly erased and overprinted.” An indelible image of the effects of scale. https://lnkd.in/dyahdkh View in LinkedIn

2016 PHYSICS NOBEL. “The three winners all explained the behaviour of exotic matter through the mathematical concept of topology, which describes properties that remain unchanged if an object is deformed but not torn.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

STRANGE MATTER NOBEL. “Physics of 2D exotic matter wins Nobel. British-born theorists recognized for work on topological phases. David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz have won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical explanations of strange states of matter in two-dimensional materials, known as topological phases.” https://lnkd.in/dPhKund View in LinkedIn

Hard to resist freezing in time a glimpse like this. View in LinkedIn