The ytterbium crystal was first synthesized a year ago by scientists in China, where the government in Beijing has invested heavily in hopes of creating synthetic quantum materials with novel properties. It appears they may have now succeeded, said Mourigal, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech's School of Physics. "Imagine a state of matter where this entanglement doesn't involve two electrons but involves, three, five, 10 or 10 billion particles all in the same system," Mourigal said. "You can create a very, very exotic state of matter based on the fact that all these particles are entangled with each other....