Scientists have just demonstrated the existence of a new form of Matter ...

The Excitonium.

The Excitonium is a condensate that exhibits macroscopic quantum phenomena, such as a superconductor, superfluid or insulating electronic crystal. It is composed of excitons, particles that are formed in a very strange quantum mechanical pairing, in this case a separate electron and the hole left behind.

It's something that has challenged reason since it was theorized 50 years ago but to explain it as I understood it, it turns out that when an electron, which is on the edge of a valence band packed with electrons in a semiconductor, gets excited and jumps the energy gap to the conduction band that would otherwise be empty leaves behind a "hole" in the valence band. That hole behaves as if it were a positively charged particle that attracts the escaped electron. When the electron escaped with its negative charge is paired with the hole, the two form a compound particle, a boson-exciton.

Physics Professor Peter Abbamonte, project leader said.

Ever since the term ‘Excitonium’ was coined in the 1960s by Harvard theoretical physicist Bert Halperin, physicists have sought to demonstrate its existence. Theorists have debated whether it would be an insulator, a perfect conductor, or a superfluid—with some convincing arguments on all sides. Since the 1970s, many experimentalists have published evidence of the existence of excitonium, but their findings weren’t definitive proof and could equally have been explained by a conventional structural phase transition.

The explanation of why scientists have delayed 50 years in demonstrating the existence of Excitonium is very simple, until now, scientists had not had the necessary experimental tools to distinguish if what appeared to be Excitonium was not actually something known as Peierls Phase. Although not related to the formation of excitons, the Peierls Phases and the condensation of excitons share the same symmetry and observable similarities like forming a super grid and opening a single particle energy gap.

As a curious detail, demonstrating the existence of the Excitonium was never the main objective of this investigation but, we already know that in Science, as in Life, chance and fortuitous events are part of everyday life.