Alexander A. Balandin

A rug lies flat, but if you push it from the edge, wrinkles run across it. In a thin film of tantalum sulfide (1T-TaS2), wrinkles made of electrons, charge waves, freeze as if the rug were stuck to the floor. To move them, you need to apply force. Scientists have found a way to control this force using an electric field and a magnet.

Strike a diamond and it rings, but sound lives inside it even without a strike. Waves of compression and rarefaction constantly ripple through it, like the ripples a stone makes on water. Except this ripple is the thermal jitter of the atoms themselves, and it can be detected with a laser.