
Physicists uncover novel phase of matter - mica
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-physicists-uncover-phase.html
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perlpimp
this is how science article should be written in popular science journals.
with limited popular physics knowledge you can still extract useful
information with being knowledgeable in physics or chemistry. ie know about
magnetism and spectral analysis you can get the gist of what discovery was
about and how it is important.

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sp332
It's a quadropolar magnet?

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vanderZwan
Not quite: the article discusses how magnetic poles are arranged at the
_molecular_ level. At the human scale that molecular structure "averages out"
to whatever material qualities we can directly observe.

In this case, I would guess it averages out to something non-magnetic (the
article doesn't mention it so don't take my word for it). However, as the
article mentioned, it also has distinguishable properties regarding reflection
(which is how this new phase was detected), and the arrangement could lead to
an explanation for high-temperature superconductivity.

