Nils Baas at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology says that the strange, unworldly bonds that allow cesium atoms to stick together in triplets should allow much more complex objects to form too.

In fact, he says we’re on the verge of discovering a brand new form of matter governed by an entirely new branch of physics, based on topology — a kind of parallel physics, in which the laws governing behavior in this parallel universe exert an inescapable, ghostly grip on our own universe.

This new physics may provide a new way to think about entanglement and how to generate and exploit it. That will have important implications for cryptography, computing and information science in general.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1012.2698: New States of Matter Suggested By New Topological Structures

Image: Topological rings (Nils A. Baas)