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Physicists have created the most fiendishly difficult maze


Daedalus could have learned a thing or two from a team of physicists in the UK and Switzerland.

Led by physicist Felix Flicker of the University of Bristol in the UK, the group has generated routes called Hamiltonian cycles in patterns known as Ammann-Beenker tilings, producing complex fractal mazes that, they say, describe an exotic form of matter known as quasicrystals. ( Ilmari Karonen/CC0/Wikimedia Commons)In an ordered crystal – salt, or diamonds, or quartz – the atoms are arranged in a very neat pattern that repeats in three dimensions. A solution that would allow for Hamiltonians to be identified has the potential to solve many other tricky mathematical problems, from complex route finding systems to protein folding.

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