Mineral may be new state of matter

What????

Yes, that's what they say.

Herbertsmithite's electrons aren't paired —they organize into triangles, so it exhibits the illusion of fractionally charged "quasiparticles," the prediction of which garnered a Nobel Prize for some guys in 1998.

Now some other guys have come up with an alternate explanation for the basis of matter in the universe, where the particles we detect are just the ends of what they call nets of strings, with all these strings entangled, like our ordinary garden variety electrons whose spin can be entangled no matter how far apart they get. Running the calculations for their theory, they came up with Maxwell's Equations, not a bad sign, as well as the fractional charged quasi-particle effect found in herbertsmithite. Some yet other other guys say that either herbertsmithite, or something similar, could be to quantum computing what silicon is to regular computers.

Could things get any weirder?

This is way over my head.