‘World’s most difficult maze’ created by scientists – there’s an easy way out but you’ll need sharp eyes to solve it
A GROUP of scientists in the UK and Switzerland have devised what they claim is the most difficult maze ever created.
The team, led by physicist Felix Flicker of the University of Bristol, generated routes called in irregularly repeating patterns.
The resulting mazes describe a bizarre form of matter known as quasicrystals.
“When we looked at the shapes of the lines we constructed, we noticed they formed incredibly intricate mazes,” Flicker explained in a press release.
“The sizes of subsequent mazes grow exponentially – and there are an infinite number of them.”
The experiment was partially based on the movement of the Knight around a chessboard.
In what is known as a Knight’s tour, the piece visits every square of the chessboard just once before returning to its starting square.
This is known as a “Hamiltonian path,” which crosses through a graph and touches each vertex exactly once.
The physicists constructed infinite and ever-growing Hamiltonian paths in irregular structures that describe matter known as quasicrystals.
As far as their structure goes, quasicrystals are somewhere between glass and regularly ordered crystals like salt or quartz.
To tie back to the chess analogy, quasicrystal atoms occur in irregularly repeating and asymmetric patterns, unlike a chessboard.
They are also extremely hard to come by. Only three natural quasicrystals have ever been found, all in the same meteorite.
The Hamiltonian paths form complex mazes with a clear starting point and an exit – and while they may look complicated, they’re fairly easy to solve.
But beyond a form of entertainment, Flicker believes Hamiltonian cycles could have “practical purposes spanning different realms of science.”
The results of the experiment also show that quasicrystals can be efficient adsorbers.
The term describes the ability of solid substances to attract molecules or gases of solutions they touch to their surface.
One application of adsorption is carbon capture and storage, in which carbon dioxide molecules are prevented from entering the atmosphere.
“Our work also shows quasicrystals may be better than crystals for some adsorption applications,” said co-author Shobha Singh, a PhD researcher in Physics at Cardiff University.
“For example, bendy molecules will find more ways to land on the irregularly arranged atoms of quasicrystals. Quasicrystals are also brittle, meaning they readily break into tiny grains. This maximises their surface area for adsorption.”
Efficient adsorption could also make quasicrystals excellent candidates for catalysts – substances that lower the energy needed to spark a chemical reaction.
One possible application is the production of ammonia fertilizer used in farming.
What is a quasicrystal?
Quasicrystals may look symmetrical - but they're actually made up of irregularly repeating patterns.
Quasicrystals are a form of matter with atoms that are ordered but not periodic.
This means their pattern expands to fill all available space but is not symmetric.
The matter is structurally somewhere between glasses, which are known as amorphous solids, and crystals, which are made up of neat and orderly patterns.
Quasicrystals appear to be formed from two different structures assembled in a nonrepeating array,
They rarely occur naturally – three have been found in a meteorite that landed in Russia’s Khatyrka region in 2011.
The third and latest specimen was found in 2016 and was only a few micrometers wide.
It was discovered by a team of geologists headed by Luca Bindi from the University of Florence in Italy.
Quasicrystals have also been created artificially – notably, during the detonation of the first atomic bomb during the Trinity Test in 1945.
The temperature and pressure of the explosion fused the surrounding sand into a glassy material dubbed trinitite.
In May 2021, scientists discovered a quasicrystal in one trinitite sample.