7 ms·

Altermagnets: The first new type of magnet in nearly a century

405 points by Brajeshwar 1y ago

Related: https://phys.org/news/2024-02-altermagnetism-magnetism-broad-implications-technology.html https://phys.org/news/2024-02-altermagnetism-magnetism-broad..., https://www.ictp.it/news/2025/1/altermagnets-new-magnetic-phase https://www.ictp.it/news/2025/1/altermagnets-new-magnetic-ph...

neonate 1y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20250716005935/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2487013-weve-discovered-a-new-kind-of-magnetism-what-can-we-do-with-it/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250716005935/https://www.newsc... https://archive.ph/ObokU https://archive.ph/ObokU
nailer 1y ago
If the anti/alter difference is not obvious the first time you see https://web.archive.org/web/20250716153436im_/https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/08163029/SEI_258285089.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20250716153436im_/https://images... look at the halo around each magnet.
- russellbeattie 1y ago
  Thank you!! I didn't see the enlarged version of the image and was wondering if that had made a mistake.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    It's a New Scientist diagram, so it's still going to be wrong somehow. We have the quantum "up" and "down", which are not actual directions. The diagram has arrows pointing up or down. Redundantly, every atom with an up arrow is red and every atom with a down arrow is blue. The article also speaks of "enough atoms with magnetic moments pointing in the same direction" to create a strong field, which I think is a literal direction. Then it speaks of "magnetic arrows", presumably a term invented for the article which could mean anything. Then it also speaks of "rotated atoms". Does an atom have a direction? The diagram has oval blobs around the atoms. These rotate alternatingly in the altermagnet. But the arrows don't rotate. So what are the blobs, and what are the arrows?
    - rollcat 1y ago
      Popular science for you. To be able to explain something, is to have a good understanding of it. To explain something in simple terms, takes much more.
vpribish 1y ago
that article reads like an internet recipe SEO honeypot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altermagnetism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altermagnetism this is an extremely esoteric thing - no net magnetism, but has some possibly-useful properties of atomic spin... useful if you're doing some spintronics, that is. maybe.
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  After reading that article I now understand what my boomer parents felt like watching star trek for the first time. "In condensed matter physics, altermagnetism is a type of persistent magnetic state in ideal crystals. Altermagnetic structures are collinear and crystal-symmetry compensated, resulting in zero net magnetisation. Unlike in an ordinary collinear antiferromagnet, another magnetic state with zero net magnetization, the electronic bands in an altermagnet are not Kramers degenerate, but instead depend on the wavevector in a spin-dependent way due to the intrinsic crystal symmetry connecting different magnetic sublattices."
  - srcnkcl 1y ago
    Reads like Turbo Encabulator... maybe on purpose?
    - boothby 1y ago
      As somebody with a professional interest in spin lattices: no, it doesn't. (Also: I'm unfamiliar with the term "Kramers degenerate" and am reading up now)
      - LearnYouALisp 1y ago
        Honestly I feel it should read "Kramers-degenerate" if it doesn't already
  - abtinf 1y ago
    The writing on Wikipedia science and math articles tends to be absolutely indecipherable trash. Trecknobabble often makes more sense than Wikipedia, at least within the context of the show.
cogman10 1y ago
Ah, neat. If I'm reading this right, then the real big benefit of these things would be solid state magnetic storage. The benefit of these things is they don't create a magnetic field while they do respond to magnetic fields. That means you can pretty tightly pack these things together without concern that they'll interact with each other. A light electric pulse could determine if the bit is a 1 or a zero and a strong pulse would flip the bit. I'm guessing that due to this nature, these things would actually have pretty long shelf lives and near infinite read/write cycles since you are, effectively, just flipping atoms around and not actually breaking structures or dumping in charge. These should mostly work with regular silicon manufacturing. The tricky part will be how tightly you can pack these things together before the reading structures start interfering with each other.
- imdsm 1y ago
  > A light electric pulse could determine if the bit is a 1 or a zero and a strong pulse would flip the bit. Feynman moment. Breaking it down into one sentence. Bravo!
  - blks 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago
    That line is worth a dollar of subscription,
    - willlma 1y ago
      I had the same thought with a recent NewScientist article. Signed up, read it, and tried to cancel to avoid the recurring fee. There's no click to cancel; I had to submit a form + request and repeatedly check my email to see if my request had been honored. I'm still waiting for the perfect pay-per-article platform to show up.
- pedro_caetano 1y ago
  > If I'm reading this right, then the real big benefit of these things would be solid state magnetic storage. Wouldn't this also enable a much higher resolution and better noise immunity for the entire zoo of industry sensors that are based on the Hall effect?
jasonthorsness 1y ago
The article does a decent job eventually of explaining a use-case in the section "Confirming that altermagnets exist". Seems you can store information at high density in electron spin in materials where spins are naturally organized. However, so far the only suitable materials have been ferromagnets, which have macroscopic magnetic fields that make using them a nightmare. The new altermagnets have suitably organized spins but the atoms alternate their magnetic fields so there is no net magnetism from the material and they are easier to work with.
- physicsguy 1y ago
  I did my PhD in this area. It’s very difficult to “read” information stored when there is no net magnetism. Hard drives are built using a read head that detects the stray field from ferromagnetic materials. When there are particular topological textures like skyrmions you do get a spin hall effect which is quantised but in applying currents you also change the magnetisation through something called spin transfer torque.
  - vanderZwan 1y ago
    So any read operation would likely have to be a read-write operation in practice, essentially?
    - physicsguy 1y ago
      Not quite, since there are much more involved ways to read it like imaging with a TEM, but certainly not 'fit in a hard drive sized container'
searine 1y ago
Brought to you by the Tax Payers of Czechia, Germany, and the EU via : * Czech Science Foundation * The Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic * European Research Council * Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation)
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  Which raises the question -- Norway famously made its citizen fund using oil money, but which country has made the most for it's citizens from [technology] IP? Natural resources v IP resources?
  - elictronic 1y ago
    Norway basically. Nearly every other country just throws the money back into the general fund or accumulates it at the top.
    - wongarsu 1y ago
      Saudi Arabia would be the other noteworthy example. Acquired Saudi Aramco in the 70s/80s, and later diversified with projects like their (in)famous Public Investment Fund
  - pjc50 1y ago
    > but which country has made the most for it's citizens from [technology] IP? Post-1950 this is unambiguously the United States.
    - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
      What's specific government/country owned IP? Just what you think the most lucrative is.
      - mNovak 1y ago
        Not only the research, but the deployment of the GPS constellation comes to mind. [1] gives an estimated economic benefit of $1.4T, in the US alone. [1] https://space.commerce.gov/doc-study-on-economic-benefits-of-gps/ https://space.commerce.gov/doc-study-on-economic-benefits-of...
0xedd 1y ago
[dead]
godelski 1y ago
> In a paper that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, he and his colleagues predict the existence of yet another kind of magnetism, which he calls antialtermagnetism. Can we stop referring to ArXiv papers third way? And for the love of God, just link the fucking abstract, never NEVER link the html![0] You just change {html,pdf} -> abs We shouldn't say "not peer reviewed" because it isn't accurate. Being published in a journal doesn't mean a work is correct nor does it mean peers read it. Putting the paper on ArXiv does mean peers are reviewing it. The point of publishing is to communicate our work to others and journals and conferences can often be harmful to that process, making researchers oversell or even avoid looking in certain directions because a few opinionated peers shoot them down. It's happened to Nobel level works too. The review process is just fucked up. It might be able to tell you if a paper is wrong but it can't tell you if it has no mistakes or is right. I mean it took two years to confirm this one, right? (Physical validation) but the way we say "hasn't been peer reviewed" implies that if it has been published in a journal then it's factual. That's not how it works and frankly that's not how it should work. On top of that they take money from the government, gets articles for free, don't pay reviewers (meaning the universities pay for reviewers), and have the audacity to charge people to read that work. It's basically just a scheme to extract government money. Sorry, I really just hate the publication process. It stifles innovation and wastes so many people's time [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01607 https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01607
- gus_massa 1y ago
  Nitpicking: > Putting the paper on ArXiv does mean peers are reviewing it. You can upload a pdf to the ArXiv and not send it to any journal. I think you need an invitation to create an account, but it's 99% like WordPress.
  - mindcrime 1y ago
    > I think you need an invitation to create an account, Anybody can create an account on arXiv.[1][2] However, having an account and uploading are different things. Strictly speaking, you have to be endorsed to submit a paper. But some endorsements are granted automatically, based on various criteria. So not everybody has to go explicitly ask people for an endorsement: arXiv requires that users be endorsed before submitting their first paper to a category. arXiv may give some people automatic endorsements based on subject area, topic, previous submissions, and academic affiliation. In most cases, automatic endorsement is given to authors from known academic institutions and research facilities. Generally speaking, the "word on the street" is that it's as simple as "register with a .edu email address and you get auto endorsed, otherwise you don't." But I think the reality is slightly more complex than that. Although the exact details are kept private, probably at least in part to prevent people from gaming the system. Note that the page encourages you to register with an "institutional" email address, but doesn't specifically say it has to be a .edu one. arXiv submitters are therefore encouraged to associate an institutional email address, if they have one, with their arXiv account. This will expedite the endorsement process. [1]: https://info.arxiv.org/help/registerhelp.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/registerhelp.html [2]: https://arxiv.org/user/register https://arxiv.org/user/register
b0a04gl 1y ago
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Animats 1y ago
"However, researchers tend to feel that these clever tricks may not lead to scalable altermagnets anytime soon, as the methods are difficult to pull off." This is a good scientific discovery, if replicated, but the hype drowns out the science.
- dylan604 1y ago
  But that's different from a lot of announcements where after reading, you are left with the impression a viable product is right around the corner
ggm 1y ago
Analogous beliefs about new RAM models up-ending the market for memory turned out to be far slower to hit the streets, and had far less impact on the DRAM market. I would love to have something at modern memory speed, which behaved like core: Turn off the machine, its run-state is frozen. Turn back on, the memory state is still there. But the reality is that machines are built to DRAM, and DRAM persists as the basic memory model for the "architecture" of a system
- codedokode 1y ago
  You can save memory after turning the system off, and swap pages in after turning on.
  - cgannett 1y ago
    even if its not faster than DRAM I wonder at what point would it just not make sense to have two separate modules. Like all the volitile storage in a system could be in the L-cache/s on the CPU and for most things that plus this faster non-volitile storage would do the trick. I wonder what kind of optimizations would have been made in a world where stuff like DRAM just didnt exist and we just had to deal with the bottlenecks of non-volitile storage media
    - coredog64 1y ago
      Sounds like the era when we mainly transitioned to solid state storage. When spinning rust was the primary technology and RAM prices were high, you could buy hybrid drives that had small amounts of solid state cache (mainly intended for common OS files). And even today, all but the cheapest SSDs will have onboard DRAM for better write speeds.
  - solid_fuel 1y ago
    That's true but you can get creative in a case where you don't need to page things back in from the disk. You could do something like powering off the entire system (assuming you have this kind of memory in the CPU too) while you're waiting for a disk read, if there's nothing else to do. So I could see big potential for power savings in things like phones and other battery powered devices.
program_whiz 1y ago
Doesn't this imply a 4th type with alternating rotated atoms and aligned magnetic spin? Also seems like you could mix and match (making the effect continuously tunable at macro scale).
- hammock 1y ago
  Yea they mentioned it in the article. Antialtermagnetism
eccentricwind 1y ago
If It's not all hype and hyperbole, It could be a massive breakthrough in data storage, but It's better to remain prudent and reserve some doubt.
- Chief_Searcha 1y ago
  Yep that's pretty much my take on any scientific article. It's really hard to tell which of these things you'll hear about 10 years down the line.
throwanem 1y ago
So it's an entirely new kind of magnetism, altogether?
- broach 1y ago
  (Everyone says:) “So it's an entirely new kind of magnetism!” Thank you, _Airplane!_ https://youtu.be/0wxp-NxJny8 https://youtu.be/0wxp-NxJny8
alganet 1y ago
This is likely to be less important than it really is. It reminds me of the "new state of matter discovered" kinds of articles that are known to get clicks. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22new%20state%20of%20matter%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22new%2... And also the "vantablack" fad: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=vantablack https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=vantabla... Basically, any potential discovery that can barely fit the "new kind of..." usually sounds more impressive than it really is. This article is full of it. I'm a programmer with very basic knowledge of magnetism, so, I can't say for sure what the discovery means, or if it is a discovery at all.
- echelon_musk 1y ago
  > I'm a programmer with very basic knowledge of magnetism, so, I can't say for sure what the discovery means, or if it is a discovery at all. Perhaps you should have lead with this.
  - alganet 1y ago
    I haven't said anything about magnetism. Read my comment again.
    - godelski 1y ago
      I read it, and I don't know where it implies you know anything about states of matter or material physics. I also read the response, and it seems to be more general than you give credit. Allow me to interpret. "You probably shouldn't have strong opinions on things you don't have a strong expertise in."
      - alganet 1y ago
        Duh, it implies I don't know about magnetism, which is something I stated. What it tries to do is to provoke me to impostor my way into searching about magnetism and then repeating something that I read. And it failed at that. I'm not here to display any prowess in physics knowledge.
jepj57 1y ago
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.040501 https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.04...
taeric 1y ago
I like how the headline makes it sound like we may have had an explosion of new magnet types for a while, and then that stopped for nearly a century. :D
Tossrock 1y ago
Weird that there was no mention of paramagnetism/diamagnetism in here.
- degamad 1y ago
  The phys.org link does have this relevant statement as to why those two are a different type of thing: > Although other types of magnetism, such as diamagnetism and paramagnetism have been categorized, these describe specific responses to externally applied magnetic fields rather than spontaneous magnetic orderings in materials.
sneakerblack 1y ago
This was discovered last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0st_6sE7Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0st_6sE7Bk
beskababan 1y ago
[flagged]
vanderZwan 1y ago
> One of Šmejkal’s favourite pieces is Horseman, a striking picture that features an elaborate, tessellating series of mounted figures. Strangely enough, it was this piece that inspired him to predict the existence of an entirely new kind of magnetism. I find it a little annoying that they don't show the actual artwork (although they do link to a page with it[0]), and give a description that does not really capture what the image conveys. Because upon seeing it, it immediately becomes obvious how that might inspire someone who thinks about electromagnetic fields all day. Well, obvious to people with some passing familiarity with electromagnetic fields at least. I'm assuming copyright got in the way but even then they could have added an equivalent illustration of their own. [0] https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/en/about-escher/escher-today/horseman?lang=en https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/en/about-escher/escher-today/ho... [1] https://www.nga.gov/artworks/54229-horseman https://www.nga.gov/artworks/54229-horseman (alternate link in case the first one doesn't load)
- eythian 1y ago
  That museum (Escher in het Paleis) is worth visiting if you get the chance.
  - vanderZwan 1y ago
    I'm Dutch and I have a bachelor's degree in arts, so it probably won't surprise you that have :). And yes, it is!
- yencabulator 1y ago
  Escher died in 1972, 50+ years after his death *should* let his copyright expire!
vanderZwan 1y ago
> In 2024, researchers led by Atasi Chakraborty, a member of Šmejkal’s research group, demonstrated that applying compressive strain to rhenium dioxide – long known to be an antiferromagnet – triggers a transition into an altermagnetic state. > What’s more, a trio of researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China realised that you can also create the right internal magnetic disturbances by stacking an antiferromagnet between layers of a different material, like a sandwich. Does anyone else find it odd that they do not name the authors of the paper[0] that showed the second discovery? (Yichen Liu, Junxi Yu, and Cheng-Cheng Liu, for the record). [0] https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.206702 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.13...

405 points by Brajeshwar 1y ago

neonate 1y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20250716005935/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2487013-weve-discovered-a-new-kind-of-magnetism-what-can-we-do-with-it/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250716005935/https://www.newsc... https://archive.ph/ObokU https://archive.ph/ObokU

nailer 1y ago

If the anti/alter difference is not obvious the first time you see https://web.archive.org/web/20250716153436im_/https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/08163029/SEI_258285089.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20250716153436im_/https://images... look at the halo around each magnet.

russellbeattie 1y ago
Thank you!! I didn't see the enlarged version of the image and was wondering if that had made a mistake.
- card_zero 1y ago
  It's a New Scientist diagram, so it's still going to be wrong somehow. We have the quantum "up" and "down", which are not actual directions. The diagram has arrows pointing up or down. Redundantly, every atom with an up arrow is red and every atom with a down arrow is blue. The article also speaks of "enough atoms with magnetic moments pointing in the same direction" to create a strong field, which I think is a literal direction. Then it speaks of "magnetic arrows", presumably a term invented for the article which could mean anything. Then it also speaks of "rotated atoms". Does an atom have a direction? The diagram has oval blobs around the atoms. These rotate alternatingly in the altermagnet. But the arrows don't rotate. So what are the blobs, and what are the arrows?
  - rollcat 1y ago
    Popular science for you. To be able to explain something, is to have a good understanding of it. To explain something in simple terms, takes much more.

vpribish 1y ago

that article reads like an internet recipe SEO honeypot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altermagnetism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altermagnetism this is an extremely esoteric thing - no net magnetism, but has some possibly-useful properties of atomic spin... useful if you're doing some spintronics, that is. maybe.

BizarroLand 1y ago
After reading that article I now understand what my boomer parents felt like watching star trek for the first time. "In condensed matter physics, altermagnetism is a type of persistent magnetic state in ideal crystals. Altermagnetic structures are collinear and crystal-symmetry compensated, resulting in zero net magnetisation. Unlike in an ordinary collinear antiferromagnet, another magnetic state with zero net magnetization, the electronic bands in an altermagnet are not Kramers degenerate, but instead depend on the wavevector in a spin-dependent way due to the intrinsic crystal symmetry connecting different magnetic sublattices."
- srcnkcl 1y ago
  Reads like Turbo Encabulator... maybe on purpose?
  - boothby 1y ago
    As somebody with a professional interest in spin lattices: no, it doesn't. (Also: I'm unfamiliar with the term "Kramers degenerate" and am reading up now)
    - LearnYouALisp 1y ago
      Honestly I feel it should read "Kramers-degenerate" if it doesn't already
- abtinf 1y ago
  The writing on Wikipedia science and math articles tends to be absolutely indecipherable trash. Trecknobabble often makes more sense than Wikipedia, at least within the context of the show.

cogman10 1y ago

Ah, neat. If I'm reading this right, then the real big benefit of these things would be solid state magnetic storage. The benefit of these things is they don't create a magnetic field while they do respond to magnetic fields. That means you can pretty tightly pack these things together without concern that they'll interact with each other. A light electric pulse could determine if the bit is a 1 or a zero and a strong pulse would flip the bit. I'm guessing that due to this nature, these things would actually have pretty long shelf lives and near infinite read/write cycles since you are, effectively, just flipping atoms around and not actually breaking structures or dumping in charge. These should mostly work with regular silicon manufacturing. The tricky part will be how tightly you can pack these things together before the reading structures start interfering with each other.

imdsm 1y ago
> A light electric pulse could determine if the bit is a 1 or a zero and a strong pulse would flip the bit. Feynman moment. Breaking it down into one sentence. Bravo!
- blks 1y ago
  [flagged]
- OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago
  That line is worth a dollar of subscription,
  - willlma 1y ago
    I had the same thought with a recent NewScientist article. Signed up, read it, and tried to cancel to avoid the recurring fee. There's no click to cancel; I had to submit a form + request and repeatedly check my email to see if my request had been honored. I'm still waiting for the perfect pay-per-article platform to show up.
pedro_caetano 1y ago
> If I'm reading this right, then the real big benefit of these things would be solid state magnetic storage. Wouldn't this also enable a much higher resolution and better noise immunity for the entire zoo of industry sensors that are based on the Hall effect?

jasonthorsness 1y ago

The article does a decent job eventually of explaining a use-case in the section "Confirming that altermagnets exist". Seems you can store information at high density in electron spin in materials where spins are naturally organized. However, so far the only suitable materials have been ferromagnets, which have macroscopic magnetic fields that make using them a nightmare. The new altermagnets have suitably organized spins but the atoms alternate their magnetic fields so there is no net magnetism from the material and they are easier to work with.

physicsguy 1y ago
I did my PhD in this area. It’s very difficult to “read” information stored when there is no net magnetism. Hard drives are built using a read head that detects the stray field from ferromagnetic materials. When there are particular topological textures like skyrmions you do get a spin hall effect which is quantised but in applying currents you also change the magnetisation through something called spin transfer torque.
- vanderZwan 1y ago
  So any read operation would likely have to be a read-write operation in practice, essentially?
  - physicsguy 1y ago
    Not quite, since there are much more involved ways to read it like imaging with a TEM, but certainly not 'fit in a hard drive sized container'

searine 1y ago

Brought to you by the Tax Payers of Czechia, Germany, and the EU via : * Czech Science Foundation * The Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic * European Research Council * Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation)

pbhjpbhj 1y ago
Which raises the question -- Norway famously made its citizen fund using oil money, but which country has made the most for it's citizens from [technology] IP? Natural resources v IP resources?
- elictronic 1y ago
  Norway basically. Nearly every other country just throws the money back into the general fund or accumulates it at the top.
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    Saudi Arabia would be the other noteworthy example. Acquired Saudi Aramco in the 70s/80s, and later diversified with projects like their (in)famous Public Investment Fund
- pjc50 1y ago
  > but which country has made the most for it's citizens from [technology] IP? Post-1950 this is unambiguously the United States.
  - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    What's specific government/country owned IP? Just what you think the most lucrative is.
    - mNovak 1y ago
      Not only the research, but the deployment of the GPS constellation comes to mind. [1] gives an estimated economic benefit of $1.4T, in the US alone. [1] https://space.commerce.gov/doc-study-on-economic-benefits-of-gps/ https://space.commerce.gov/doc-study-on-economic-benefits-of...

0xedd 1y ago

[dead]

godelski 1y ago

> In a paper that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, he and his colleagues predict the existence of yet another kind of magnetism, which he calls antialtermagnetism. Can we stop referring to ArXiv papers third way? And for the love of God, just link the fucking abstract, never NEVER link the html![0] You just change {html,pdf} -> abs We shouldn't say "not peer reviewed" because it isn't accurate. Being published in a journal doesn't mean a work is correct nor does it mean peers read it. Putting the paper on ArXiv does mean peers are reviewing it. The point of publishing is to communicate our work to others and journals and conferences can often be harmful to that process, making researchers oversell or even avoid looking in certain directions because a few opinionated peers shoot them down. It's happened to Nobel level works too. The review process is just fucked up. It might be able to tell you if a paper is wrong but it can't tell you if it has no mistakes or is right. I mean it took two years to confirm this one, right? (Physical validation) but the way we say "hasn't been peer reviewed" implies that if it has been published in a journal then it's factual. That's not how it works and frankly that's not how it should work. On top of that they take money from the government, gets articles for free, don't pay reviewers (meaning the universities pay for reviewers), and have the audacity to charge people to read that work. It's basically just a scheme to extract government money. Sorry, I really just hate the publication process. It stifles innovation and wastes so many people's time [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01607 https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01607

gus_massa 1y ago
Nitpicking: > Putting the paper on ArXiv does mean peers are reviewing it. You can upload a pdf to the ArXiv and not send it to any journal. I think you need an invitation to create an account, but it's 99% like WordPress.
- mindcrime 1y ago
  > I think you need an invitation to create an account, Anybody can create an account on arXiv.[1][2] However, having an account and uploading are different things. Strictly speaking, you have to be endorsed to submit a paper. But some endorsements are granted automatically, based on various criteria. So not everybody has to go explicitly ask people for an endorsement: arXiv requires that users be endorsed before submitting their first paper to a category. arXiv may give some people automatic endorsements based on subject area, topic, previous submissions, and academic affiliation. In most cases, automatic endorsement is given to authors from known academic institutions and research facilities. Generally speaking, the "word on the street" is that it's as simple as "register with a .edu email address and you get auto endorsed, otherwise you don't." But I think the reality is slightly more complex than that. Although the exact details are kept private, probably at least in part to prevent people from gaming the system. Note that the page encourages you to register with an "institutional" email address, but doesn't specifically say it has to be a .edu one. arXiv submitters are therefore encouraged to associate an institutional email address, if they have one, with their arXiv account. This will expedite the endorsement process. [1]: https://info.arxiv.org/help/registerhelp.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/registerhelp.html [2]: https://arxiv.org/user/register https://arxiv.org/user/register

b0a04gl 1y ago

[dead]

Animats 1y ago

"However, researchers tend to feel that these clever tricks may not lead to scalable altermagnets anytime soon, as the methods are difficult to pull off." This is a good scientific discovery, if replicated, but the hype drowns out the science.

dylan604 1y ago
But that's different from a lot of announcements where after reading, you are left with the impression a viable product is right around the corner

ggm 1y ago

Analogous beliefs about new RAM models up-ending the market for memory turned out to be far slower to hit the streets, and had far less impact on the DRAM market. I would love to have something at modern memory speed, which behaved like core: Turn off the machine, its run-state is frozen. Turn back on, the memory state is still there. But the reality is that machines are built to DRAM, and DRAM persists as the basic memory model for the "architecture" of a system

codedokode 1y ago
You can save memory after turning the system off, and swap pages in after turning on.
- cgannett 1y ago
  even if its not faster than DRAM I wonder at what point would it just not make sense to have two separate modules. Like all the volitile storage in a system could be in the L-cache/s on the CPU and for most things that plus this faster non-volitile storage would do the trick. I wonder what kind of optimizations would have been made in a world where stuff like DRAM just didnt exist and we just had to deal with the bottlenecks of non-volitile storage media
  - coredog64 1y ago
    Sounds like the era when we mainly transitioned to solid state storage. When spinning rust was the primary technology and RAM prices were high, you could buy hybrid drives that had small amounts of solid state cache (mainly intended for common OS files). And even today, all but the cheapest SSDs will have onboard DRAM for better write speeds.
- solid_fuel 1y ago
  That's true but you can get creative in a case where you don't need to page things back in from the disk. You could do something like powering off the entire system (assuming you have this kind of memory in the CPU too) while you're waiting for a disk read, if there's nothing else to do. So I could see big potential for power savings in things like phones and other battery powered devices.

program_whiz 1y ago

Doesn't this imply a 4th type with alternating rotated atoms and aligned magnetic spin? Also seems like you could mix and match (making the effect continuously tunable at macro scale).

hammock 1y ago
Yea they mentioned it in the article. Antialtermagnetism

eccentricwind 1y ago

If It's not all hype and hyperbole, It could be a massive breakthrough in data storage, but It's better to remain prudent and reserve some doubt.

Chief_Searcha 1y ago
Yep that's pretty much my take on any scientific article. It's really hard to tell which of these things you'll hear about 10 years down the line.

throwanem 1y ago

So it's an entirely new kind of magnetism, altogether?

broach 1y ago
(Everyone says:) “So it's an entirely new kind of magnetism!” Thank you, _Airplane!_ https://youtu.be/0wxp-NxJny8 https://youtu.be/0wxp-NxJny8

alganet 1y ago

This is likely to be less important than it really is. It reminds me of the "new state of matter discovered" kinds of articles that are known to get clicks. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22new%20state%20of%20matter%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22new%2... And also the "vantablack" fad: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=vantablack https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=vantabla... Basically, any potential discovery that can barely fit the "new kind of..." usually sounds more impressive than it really is. This article is full of it. I'm a programmer with very basic knowledge of magnetism, so, I can't say for sure what the discovery means, or if it is a discovery at all.

echelon_musk 1y ago
> I'm a programmer with very basic knowledge of magnetism, so, I can't say for sure what the discovery means, or if it is a discovery at all. Perhaps you should have lead with this.
- alganet 1y ago
  I haven't said anything about magnetism. Read my comment again.
  - godelski 1y ago
    I read it, and I don't know where it implies you know anything about states of matter or material physics. I also read the response, and it seems to be more general than you give credit. Allow me to interpret. "You probably shouldn't have strong opinions on things you don't have a strong expertise in."
    - alganet 1y ago
      Duh, it implies I don't know about magnetism, which is something I stated. What it tries to do is to provoke me to impostor my way into searching about magnetism and then repeating something that I read. And it failed at that. I'm not here to display any prowess in physics knowledge.

jepj57 1y ago

https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.040501 https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.04...

taeric 1y ago

I like how the headline makes it sound like we may have had an explosion of new magnet types for a while, and then that stopped for nearly a century. :D

Tossrock 1y ago

Weird that there was no mention of paramagnetism/diamagnetism in here.

degamad 1y ago
The phys.org link does have this relevant statement as to why those two are a different type of thing: > Although other types of magnetism, such as diamagnetism and paramagnetism have been categorized, these describe specific responses to externally applied magnetic fields rather than spontaneous magnetic orderings in materials.

sneakerblack 1y ago

This was discovered last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0st_6sE7Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0st_6sE7Bk

beskababan 1y ago

[flagged]

vanderZwan 1y ago

> One of Šmejkal’s favourite pieces is Horseman, a striking picture that features an elaborate, tessellating series of mounted figures. Strangely enough, it was this piece that inspired him to predict the existence of an entirely new kind of magnetism. I find it a little annoying that they don't show the actual artwork (although they do link to a page with it[0]), and give a description that does not really capture what the image conveys. Because upon seeing it, it immediately becomes obvious how that might inspire someone who thinks about electromagnetic fields all day. Well, obvious to people with some passing familiarity with electromagnetic fields at least. I'm assuming copyright got in the way but even then they could have added an equivalent illustration of their own. [0] https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/en/about-escher/escher-today/horseman?lang=en https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/en/about-escher/escher-today/ho... [1] https://www.nga.gov/artworks/54229-horseman https://www.nga.gov/artworks/54229-horseman (alternate link in case the first one doesn't load)

eythian 1y ago
That museum (Escher in het Paleis) is worth visiting if you get the chance.
- vanderZwan 1y ago
  I'm Dutch and I have a bachelor's degree in arts, so it probably won't surprise you that have :). And yes, it is!
yencabulator 1y ago
Escher died in 1972, 50+ years after his death *should* let his copyright expire!

vanderZwan 1y ago

> In 2024, researchers led by Atasi Chakraborty, a member of Šmejkal’s research group, demonstrated that applying compressive strain to rhenium dioxide – long known to be an antiferromagnet – triggers a transition into an altermagnetic state. > What’s more, a trio of researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China realised that you can also create the right internal magnetic disturbances by stacking an antiferromagnet between layers of a different material, like a sandwich. Does anyone else find it odd that they do not name the authors of the paper[0] that showed the second discovery? (Yichen Liu, Junxi Yu, and Cheng-Cheng Liu, for the record). [0] https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.206702 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.13...