The electron's charge gets all the glory: It is, after all, responsible for the plethora of electronic gizmos that surround us. But the particle's magnetic behavior—a property known as spin—has also been tantalizing scientists for decades. Thirty-five years ago, for example, Russian theorists suggested that impurity atoms in a semiconductor might interact with electrons' spins to redirect currents flowing through it. A related effect, called the Hall effect—in which magnetic fields push electrons around by interacting with their charge—had been known for more than a century. But despite decades of work, the spin-based Hall effect had never been spotted—until now.
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