Researchers have produced a “human scale” demonstration of a new phase of matter called quadrupole topological insulators that was recently predicted using theoretical physics. These are the first experimental findings to validate this theory.

The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature.

The team’s work with QTIs was born out of the decade-old understanding of the properties of a class of materials called topological insulators. “TIs are electrical insulators on the inside and conductors along their boundaries, and may hold great potential for helping build low-power, robust computers and devices, all defined at the atomic scale,” said mechanical science and engineering professor and senior investigator Gaurav Bahl.

The uncommon properties of TIs make them a special form of electronic matter. “Collections of electrons can form their own phases within materials. These can be familiar solid, liquid and gas phases like water, but they can also sometimes form more unusual phases like a TI,” said co-author and physics professor Taylor Hughes.

LabEscape is calling all agents back to the lab to solve the continuing mystery of the disappearance of Professor Schrödenberg, a University of Illinois physicist who developed a top-secret quantum computer that can crack any digital-security encryption code in the world. Once again, it’s up to you and your team to save the free world from evil forces plotting its destruction, and you have precisely 60 minutes to do it. Mysterious circumstances and new intelligence have reopened this investigation—unhackable messages were hacked three days ago, there are power surges coming from Dr. S’s abandoned secret lab, and her missing technology and a hard drive that were lost before her disappearance have now resurfaced.

LabEscape, a science-themed escape room at Lincoln Square Mall in Urbana, first opened in January 2017. Paul Kwiat, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, initiated the nonprofit LabEscape project two years ago as a community outreach effort, with the goal of showing that science can be fun, beautiful, useful, and accessible to all.