Scientists Vibrated a Box of Particles And They Formed a Strange New Material

The linked article - including the above graphic - used a computer simulation of 'atoms' of two distinct sizes - the ratio of those sizes being the primary variable in the various digital experiments - being vibrated at a constant speed until they organized themselves into a crystalline arrangement. This spontaneous generation of crystals is something I have posted about in the past, particularly in an interesting, large-scale demonstration from Alpha Phoenix.

Following the digital experiments, the scientists made real world, physical experiments with non-magnetic spheres set to vibrate at a constant rate of 120 times per second and found that spheres of 2.4mm diameter and 1.2mm diameter (I think 1.2mm - the article says "the other half that size" in reference to the 2.4mm diameter spheres) and found that the mixture of spheres didn't form a crystal but rather formed what they refer to as a quasicrystal - which sounds to me like a heterogeneous mixture of different crystalline regions.

The article also mentions that this has been found IRL in, "an alloy of aluminum and manganese revealed the undeniable hallmarks of an ordered material that lacked the infinite periodic patterns of a crystal." I'm going to have to read more about this because while it's interesting, I'm not entirely sure I understand the quasicrystals just yet.