"And so we will colonize Mars, drill Europa and cure cancer"

[Prrkitty]

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39847/113/

Quote: Often times when professors submit research grant proposals, they include very lofty stated goals. And while the real world is the real world and it's not always possible to achieve those goals in practicality, science is usually advanced in mostly measurable and predictable ways. Well, that is exactly what didn't happen at Canada's McGill University when they accidentally discovered a new state of matter, now dubbed "quasi-3D".

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Passing this on for those that might be interested in reading this. Nothing like finding something... "accidentally".

[g.iaroos]

I just like accidental discoveries like this one. It just goes to prove that what we take for granted is not always what the actual world works.

[Anthus]

They still never explained what this Quasi-3D is.

So, I guess it is like a 2D ham sandwich? Awesome.

[Beldaran]

Analogy time:

2D: Legend of Zelda
3D: Half Life
Quasi-3D: Diablo 2

As I am not a physicist, you can rest assured that I completely made this up and the analogy is, in all probability, completely bogus.

[ZTC]

Running with Bel's analogy, would not Doom be also called quasi-3d or other games that use 2.5d? Or is it something along the lines between the third dimention and fourth? :shrug:

[Revfan9]

I read a bit about this, the places where I looked this up had a bit of conflicting information and explained it mostly with incomprehensible quantum mechanics jargon, but here's what I catch of it:

What happens when certain configurations of atoms are exposed to temperatures close to absolute zero, is that the electrons start moving more closely to the atomic core and move in a 2-dimensional plane. What makes this unusual is that electrons usually move around in a 3-dimensional cloud, rather than on an almost-flat plane. It isn't true 2D space however, as the atoms still have a measurable depth (but not very much, only around 0.000001% of the original depth of the atom), so it's called Quasi-3D.

Anyone who has more knowledge on the subject is free to prove me completely wrong, however.