Researchers at the University of Illinois have announced that they have made the discovery of a new form of matter, excitonium. This material was discovered by physics professor Peter Abbamonte and his team, and is formed from a kind of boson, a composite particle that could allow for the matter to act as a superfluid, superconductor, or even as an insulating electronic crystal.

Peter Abbamonte and his team had worked with colleagues at the University of Illinois, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Amsterdam in order to finally prove that this matter actually does exist, as it had been theorized to exist more than fifty years ago but was never actually proven to until now.

Excitonium is a condensate made up of excitons, which are from when you combine escaped electrons and the “holes” they left behind. This is possible because when an electron is on the edge of one energy level it is able to jump into the next energy level leaving a “hole” behind. This hole acts as a positively charged particle attracting all of the negative charge electrons that escaped.

In order to prove the existence of excitons the team studied crystals doped with dichalcogenide titanium diselenide, a transition metal, and were able to produce the results five separate times.