‘The secrets of exotic matter’ revealed by the winners of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to David J Thouless, F Duncan M Haldane and J Michael Kosterlitz for their ‘theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter’ that ‘revealed the secrets of exotic matter’. If that sounds massively difficult to comprehend – you’re right, it is. But, as this collaboration between the French filmmaker Charlotte Arene and the research team Physics Reimagined (at the University of Paris-Saclay) shows, sometimes complex and seemingly obscure discoveries can have consequences well beyond the walls of a laboratory. With a distinctive, shapeshifting animated style, The Hairy Nobel combs through the surprisingly fascinating history of topological insulators, including how their discovery cascaded into breakthroughs in several fields of research, including electronics, superconductors and quantum computers – and prompted a new one.