I Found Ultra-Pure Quantum Crystals in an Abandoned Mine in the Atacama Desert

I was arguing with a Chilean friend who moved a few years ago to the USA. He was telling me how Chile doesn't do good science. I challenged his claim saying Chile actually had great scientists that were severely underfunded (Chile's investment in science and research is ~0.4% of the GDP versus the OECD average of ~2.7%).

I think it's sort of a big consensus with people that have never been involved in science work, in Chile, that science is sort of a "lazy-man" type of work. Chilean universities put a lot of emphasis in foundational science research. It should be the industry, in my opinion, that helps bridge the gaps between foundational research and applied science. But the major industries in Chile don't need to do that, why put money into R&D when you can already be a billion-dollar industry by exporting rocks. Chile's main export is not actually copper, it's rocks that have copper in them. We (I'm Chilean) export the rocks and buy back the copper cables.

Recently the newly elected president criticized foundational research saying it doesn't "turn into jobs" and instead "ends up in an expensive book abandoned in a library". It really reminded me of my friend's words, it's the attitude of someone that doesn't understand the importance of foundational science.

This research is interesting, although the article is quite technical, and I'm very happy to see the involvement of Chilean scientists in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_spin_liquid

Neat

By the same author: "Altered States from the Inside Out: A Physicist’s Embodied Journey Through Seizures, Psychedelics, and Consciousness"[1]

[1] https://medium.com/@breid.at/seizures-crystals-psychedelics-...

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One interesting techno-signature a civilization that happened hundreds of millions of years ago would be odd mineral deposits.

It's never the Silurians, but it's fun to pretend we found something interesting.

Quantum crystals sound more like something out of a video game than reality

"In theory, samples with no-interlayer impurities should look something like this in direct measurements"

Can we tell their purity from looking at the photos?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_encabulator

Was there a DeLorean hidden in the mine nearby?

> Herbertsmithite

I read "Hilbertschmidte"