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The structure of the material. (Li et al., Nature, 2021) Physicists have taken the first ever image of a Wigner crystal – a strange honeycomb-pattern material inside another material, made entirely out of electrons. Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner first theorized this crystal in 1934, but it's taken more than eight decades for scientists to finally get a direct look at the "electron ice". The fascinating first image shows electrons squished together into a tight, repeating pattern – like tiny blue butterfly wings, or pressings of an alien clover. The researchers behind the study, published on Sept. 29 in the...

In 1934, Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, theorized a strange kind of matter — a crystal made from electrons. The idea was simple; proving it wasn’t. Physicists tried many tricks over eight decades to nudge electrons into forming these so-called Wigner crystals, with limited success. In June, however, two independent groups of physicists reported in Nature the most direct experimental observations of Wigner crystals yet. “Wigner crystallization is such an old idea,” said Brian Skinner, a physicist at Ohio State University who was not involved with the work. “To see it so cleanly was really nice.” To make...