Electrons are surprisingly rugged particles that fiercely maintain their identity in metals. As they move, they conduct heat and electric charge in all directions in a precisely fixed ratio, a universal property of electricity called the Wiedemann-Franz law. On page 1320 of this issue, Tanatar et al. (1) show that under the right conditions, metals can exhibit a new type of electrical conductivity for which the Wiedemann-Franz law no longer holds. Under these conditions, conventional electrons appear to live alongside a fundamentally different kind of electricity in which electrons have broken apart and reformed into a new class of charge- and heat-carrying excitation. Such failures of accepted laws in science often signal new and interesting underlying causes, and these results may help us understand the mechanisms behind high-temperature superconductors and other unusual materials.
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