Stephen D. Wilson

In some crystals, electrons line up into a wave, like ripples on the surface of water, but made of charge. Usually, such a wave exists only in extreme cold. But in this experiment, scientists saw that traces of the wave persist even at room temperature.

In the crystal CsV3Sb5-xSnx, which becomes a superconductor at low temperatures, current does not flow as a uniform stream but along narrow, winding paths. A scanning microscope with a sensitive magnetic field sensor helped reveal these paths: it picks up the faintest currents, much like a sonar probes the seafloor.