science

Sort of, yeah. As I read it, in a regular conductor, electrons move around on the surface basically however they want. But we developed a process where on a 2D conductor, like a piece of aluminum foil, we could get the electrons to only move along the edges. Now they've extended that where, by making helical (spiral spring-shaped) strands of tellurium, they can make the electrons flow directionally along those helices. There's a pretty good illustration from the authors of the paper in the article.

If people say this is applicable to stuff like quantum computing and solar panels, I believe them, but I don't know enough to say how or why.