Among magnets, there are quiet masters of disguise. An ordinary magnet attracts paperclips and has two poles — north and south. But there are materials that are internally arranged like a magnetic chessboard: their atoms are aligned in a strict order, yet externally the material behaves neutrally, as if no magnet exists at all. Such substances are called altermagnets.
Physicists studied 135 such materials from an open database. They computed how electrons, tiny carriers of electricity, move within them. It turned out that in altermagnets, electrons can veer sideways even without an external magnetic field. It's as if water in a river spontaneously turned a corner even though the channel is straight. This property generates special currents and causes light to change its polarization — the direction of wave oscillation.
These materials could become the foundation for devices where information is transmitted not by electric charge but by spin — the intrinsic rotation of the electron. This is a path toward faster and cooler electronics.
Altermagnets are like conductors who lead an orchestra of electrons without a baton. Their hidden order opens the door to new technologies where light and current obey invisible rules.
Altermagnets don't attract paperclips, but inside them electrons move as if the material were a strong magnet.
In Liu Cixin's novel "The Three-Body Problem," aliens use unfolded protons for instantaneous communication — altermagnets could be Earth's step toward such controlled quantum transmission.