Check out our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/teded View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-in-the-world-is-topological-quantum-matter David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016 for discovering that even microscopic matter at the smallest scale can exhibit macroscopic properties and phases that are topological. But … what does that mean? Fan Zhang helps decode some seriously tricky science. Lesson by Fan Zhang, directed by Anton Trofimov. Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible. Kerstin M. Quinto, Ivan Tsenov, Ruby Solorzano, Stephanie Perozo, Bah Becerra, Bryan Blankenburg, Rui Rizzi, Della Palacios, Karen Goepen-Wee, Vik Nagjee, Clair Chen, Joe Giamartino, Filip Dabrowski, Barbara Smalley, Megan Douglas, Alex Serbanescu, Chris, Tim Leistikow, Andrés Melo Gámez, Renhe Ji.