If it walks like a particle, and talks like a particle… it may still not be a particle. A topological soliton is a special type of wave or dislocation which behaves like a particle: it can move around but cannot spread out and disappear like you would expect from, say, a ripple on the surface of a pond. In a new study published in Nature, researchers from the University of Amsterdam demonstrate the atypical behaviour of topological solitons in a robotic metamaterial, something which in the future may be used to control how robots move, sense their surroundings and communicate.
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