A bizarre type of magnetic quasiparticle that looks like a tiny, swirling bubble could one day be used as a computing bit in future memory devices after scientists sped it up enough to transmit data.
"Skyrmions" — informally called "nanobubbles" by the scientists — are formed of a few dozen atoms and are just a few nanometers in width. By contrast, a strand of human hair is up to 100,000 nanometers thick. A skyrmion generates itself from magnetic field lines as it moves through a medium. The quasiparticle comprises elementary nanomagnets, called spins, that wind together over the magnetic lines to form a whirling, spiral structure that resembles a tight knot.
