{"id":207462,"date":"2025-02-28T13:18:16","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T19:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/physicists-capture-a-strange-fractal-butterfly-for-the-first-time"},"modified":"2025-02-28T13:18:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T19:18:16","slug":"physicists-capture-a-strange-fractal-butterfly-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/physicists-capture-a-strange-fractal-butterfly-for-the-first-time","title":{"rendered":"Physicists capture a strange fractal \u2018butterfly\u2019 for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-capture-a-strange-fractal-butterfly-for-the-first-time.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A fractal butterfly pattern produced by an unusual configuration of magnetic fields, first predicted almost 50 years ago, has been seen in detail for the first time in a twisted piece of graphene.<\/p>\n<p>While a physics student in 1976, the computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter predicted that when certain two-dimensional crystals were placed in magnetic fields, their electrons\u2019 energy levels should produce a strange pattern that looks the same no matter how far you zoom in, known as a fractal. At the time, however, Hofstadter calculated that the atoms of the crystal would have to be impossibly close together to produce such a pattern.<\/p>\n<p>Image: Yazdani Lab, Princeton University<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The electrons in a twisted piece of graphene show a strange repeating pattern first predicted in 1976, but never directly measured until now.<\/p>\n<p>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/author\/alex-wilkins\/\" class=\"\">Alex Wilkins<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fractal butterfly pattern produced by an unusual configuration of magnetic fields, first predicted almost 50 years ago, has been seen in detail for the first time in a twisted piece of graphene. While a physics student in 1976, the computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter predicted that when certain two-dimensional crystals were placed in magnetic fields, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207462","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}