For the first time, scientists have found that a bizarre subatomic “quasiparticle,” called a skyrmion, that’s capable of reproducing itself in an unusual way.

A skyrmion is considered a quasiparticle because it acts like a subatomic particle in many ways, but doesn’t have any mass. In an experiment probing how skyrmions are formed that was published in the journal NANO Letters, a team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory learned that they actually split in two and reproduce — not unlike a biological cell.

Skyrmions are packets of energy and magnetic forces that self-arrange into patterns resembling the tightly-arranged atoms inside a crystal. Physicists have speculated that manipulating them could lead to breakthroughs in data storage and transfer technology, but there are a lot of remaining questions that would need to be solved.

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