Phasons in Quasicrystals

In 2025, researchers studied a quasicrystal forged in a hypervelocity asteroid collision 600 million years ago and found that it contains phasons ! It s not a perfect icosahedral quasicrystal: it s slightly distorted. 6 gentle phason waves run through it, oriented along the 6 fivefold symmetry axes of an icosahedron. These waves were locked in when the alloy [ ]