{"id":186031,"date":"2024-03-26T12:22:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T17:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/breaking-physics-how-solitons-bend-time-space-and-rules"},"modified":"2024-03-26T12:22:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T17:22:27","slug":"breaking-physics-how-solitons-bend-time-space-and-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/breaking-physics-how-solitons-bend-time-space-and-rules","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Physics: How Solitons Bend Time, Space, and Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yq1yT6a3EKQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>If it walks like a particle, and talks like a particle\u2026 it may still not be a particle. A topological soliton is a special type of wave or dislocation that behaves like a particle: it can move around but cannot spread out and disappear like you would expect from, say, a ripple on the surface of a pond. In a new study published in <\/em><i>Nature<\/i><em>, researchers from the University of Amsterdam demonstrate the atypical behavior of topological solitons in a robotic metamaterial, something which in the future may be used to control how robots move, sense their surroundings, and communicate.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Topological solitons can be found in many places and at many different length scales. For example, they take the form of kinks in <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/1907.06620.pdf\">coiled telephone cords<\/a> and large molecules such as proteins. At a very different scale, a black hole can be understood as a topological soliton in the fabric of spacetime. Solitons play an important role in biological systems, being relevant for <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/pre\/pdf\/10.1103\/PhysRevE.82.011916\">protein folding<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41567-020-01083-1\">morphogenesis<\/a> \u2013 the development of cells or organs.<\/p>\n<p>The unique features of topological solitons \u2013 that they can move around but always retain their shape and cannot suddenly disappear \u2013 are particularly interesting when combined with so-called non-reciprocal interactions. \u201cIn such an interaction, an agent A reacts to an agent B differently to the way agent B reacts to agent A,\u201d explains Jonas Veenstra, a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam and first author of the new publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If it walks like a particle, and talks like a particle\u2026 it may still not be a particle. A topological soliton is a special type of wave or dislocation that behaves like a particle: it can move around but cannot spread out and disappear like you would expect from, say, a ripple on the surface [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}