What Are Quasicrystals and Why They Broke Science

The Crystals That Shouldn't Exist

Every student of chemistry learns a basic rule: crystals are solids whose atoms repeat in neat, predictable patterns. These patterns can have twofold, threefold, fourfold, or sixfold rotational symmetry—but never fivefold. It is one of the oldest principles in crystallography, proven mathematically and accepted for over a century.

Then, on the morning of April 8, 1982, Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman looked through an electron microscope at a rapidly cooled aluminum-manganese alloy and saw something impossible: ten bright dots arranged in a circle, spaced perfectly apart. The pattern displayed fivefold symmetry—a configuration that classical theory said could not exist in any ordered solid.

He had discovered quasicrystals, and the finding would eventually overturn a fundamental assumption in materials science.

How Quasicrystals Work

A traditional crystal—table salt, diamond, quartz—is built from atoms locked into a repeating grid. Imagine tiling a bathroom floor with square tiles: the pattern is perfectly periodic, extending in every direction with exact repetition. Quasicrystals break this rule. Their atoms are highly ordered but never repeat in a predictable cycle.

The closest everyday analogy is a Penrose tiling, a pattern invented by mathematician Roger Penrose in the 1970s. Penrose tilings use two differently shaped tiles that fit together to cover a surface completely, maintaining fivefold symmetry, yet the exact arrangement never repeats no matter how far it extends. Quasicrystals do the same thing in three dimensions, at the atomic scale.

This gives quasicrystals their defining trait: they produce sharp, clear diffraction patterns when hit with X-rays or electrons—proof of long-range order—but those patterns show "forbidden" symmetries such as fivefold, eightfold, tenfold, or twelvefold rotations that no periodic crystal can possess.

A Discovery the Scientific World Rejected

Shechtman's finding was met with fierce resistance. The idea of an ordered solid without periodicity contradicted over 150 years of established science. Double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously declared, "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." Shechtman was asked to leave his research group.

It took more than two years before his first papers on the subject were published. Gradually, other laboratories around the world reproduced the results, and theoretical physicists Dov Levine and Paul Steinhardt showed that Penrose-like tilings could explain the atomic structure. The tide turned. In 2011, Shechtman received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery, which the Nobel Committee said "revealed a new principle for packing of atoms and molecules" and forced a paradigm shift within the field.

Properties and Applications

Quasicrystals most commonly form in aluminum alloys combined with metals like iron, cobalt, nickel, or manganese. They tend to be extremely hard, have very low surface friction, and resist corrosion—properties that have attracted interest from engineers despite limited large-scale commercial use so far.

Practical applications include coatings for surgical instruments and razor blades (where hardness and corrosion resistance matter), components in LED lighting, and experimental non-stick coatings. Researchers have also explored their potential for ultra-efficient solar cells and advanced optical devices.

NASA funds quasicrystal research through a team at Colorado School of Mines, which developed a method to deliberately grow quasicrystals using magnetic and electric fields—a breakthrough published on the cover of Nature Physics. NASA sees potential in self-assembling quasicrystalline materials for space habitats, satellite components, and advanced sensors.

From Materials to the Fabric of Spacetime

In early 2026, physicists extended the quasicrystal concept far beyond metal alloys. A theoretical study by researchers at the Perimeter Institute in Canada demonstrated that quasicrystalline structures could exist in spacetime itself—the four-dimensional fabric of the universe described by Einstein's relativity. "The spacetime that we live in could be a quasicrystal," said co-author Sotiris Mygdalas.

Separately, experimentalists at Washington University in St. Louis created a time quasicrystal—a phase of matter whose energy states oscillate in an ordered but never-repeating pattern through time, sustained without energy loss.

These developments suggest quasicrystals are not just a curiosity of metallurgy but may reflect something deep about how nature organizes itself—from atoms in an alloy to the geometry of the cosmos.