Quote:Quasicrystals have teased and intrigued scientists for three decades. Now, this already strange group of materials has a bizarre new member: a two-dimensional quasicrystal made from self-assembling organic molecules.

As their name suggests, quasicrystals have a structure that’s part crystalline, part disorganized. In other words, they are something in between a structure with repeating, symmetric units, and one with completely random building blocks. Their atomic units are locally symmetric, but are not regularly repeated over longer distances. Because of these arrangements, quasicrystals are slippery and have been used in things like non-stick frying pans.

The first quasicrystal of any sort was also accidentally made in the lab, in 1982, by materials scientist Daniel Schechtman who won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 2011.

Up until that point, scientists thought the semi-organized structure of quasicrystals was an impossibility. Now, we know that’s not true. Not only can quasicrystals be grown in the lab, they can also grow in nature. In 2012, Princeton University physicist Paul Steinhardt showed that quasicrystals found in eastern Russia had fallen to Earth in a meteorite.