Quantum effects writ large

A team of physicists from Rice University, Rutgers University, and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany, this week reports in the journal Science the discovery of surprising quantum effects in a member of a broad class of materials that include high-temperature superconductors and quantum magnets. The effects were observed in a compound that was cooled nearly to absolute zero, a temperature low enough to bring about a "quantum critical point," a tipping point at which the quantum properties of the material undergo a radical change.