An elusive particle proposed in 1956 by theoretical physicist David Pines has just been discovered by a team of scientists led by Peter Abbamonte of the University of Illinois.
Scientists long suspected that this particle, called a ‘demon’, plays a fundamental role in the characteristics of several metals, but had been unable to confirm its existence thus far.
“Demons have been theoretically conjectured for a long time, but experimentalists never studied them,” Dr. Abbamonte said of the discovery in a press release. “In fact, we weren’t even looking for it. But it turned out we were doing exactly the right thing, and we found it.”
