{"id":215956,"date":"2025-06-15T09:03:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T14:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/symmetrical-crystals-can-absorb-light-asymmetrically-discovery-could-lead-to-new-technologies-that-control-light"},"modified":"2025-06-15T09:03:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T14:03:24","slug":"symmetrical-crystals-can-absorb-light-asymmetrically-discovery-could-lead-to-new-technologies-that-control-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/symmetrical-crystals-can-absorb-light-asymmetrically-discovery-could-lead-to-new-technologies-that-control-light","title":{"rendered":"Symmetrical crystals can absorb light asymmetrically: Discovery could lead to new technologies that control light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/symmetrical-crystals-can-absorb-light-asymmetrically-discovery-could-lead-to-new-technologies-that-control-light.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just when scientists thought they knew everything about crystals, a Northwestern University and University of Wisconsin-Madison collaboration has uncovered a hidden secret.<\/p>\n<p>Centrosymmetric <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/crystals\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">crystals<\/a> are a special type of material that is fully symmetrical in every direction from a central point. Previously, scientists thought only non-centrosymmetric materials could exhibit chiral behavior\u2014a property in which an object acts differently from its mirror reflection. But, for the first time, researchers have found a centrosymmetric crystal can act \u201cchiral\u201d despite its symmetry.<\/p>\n<p>In the new study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.adr5478\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Science<\/i>, the research team investigated how a specific centrosymmetric crystal interacts with circularly polarized light, which twists like a corkscrew in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just when scientists thought they knew everything about crystals, a Northwestern University and University of Wisconsin-Madison collaboration has uncovered a hidden secret. Centrosymmetric crystals are a special type of material that is fully symmetrical in every direction from a central point. Previously, scientists thought only non-centrosymmetric materials could exhibit chiral behavior\u2014a property in which an [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215956","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\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}