Greetings from the fourth dimension: Scientists glimpse 4D crystal structure using surface wave patterns

In April 1982, Prof. Dan Shechtman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology made the discovery that would later earn him the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: the quasiperiodic crystal. According to diffraction measurements made with an electron microscope, the new material appeared "disorganized" at smaller scales, yet with a distinct order and symmetry apparent at a larger scale.