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Particle gains or loses mass depending on direction it travels
Scientists have accidentally discovered a particle that has mass when it’s traveling in one direction, but no mass while traveling in a different direction. Known as semi-Dirac fermions, particles with this bizarre behavior were first predicted 16 years ago.
But a funny thing happens when you flip that on its head – if a massless particle slows down from the speed of light, it actually gains mass. “Imagine the particle is a tiny train confined to a network of tracks, which are the material’s underlying electronic structure,” said Shao. They found that the energy level of the electrons followed an unexpected pattern as the strength of the magnetic field increases, which turned out to be a key prediction of semi-Dirac fermions.
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