The modern world -- with its ubiquitous electronic devices and electrical power -- can trace its lineage directly to the discovery, less than two centuries ago, of the link between electricity and magnetism. But while engineers have harnessed electromagnetic forces on a global scale, physicists still struggle to describe the dance between electrons that creates magnetic fields. Two theoretical physicists from Rice University are reporting initial success in that area in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Their new conceptual model, which was created to learn more about the quantum quirks of high-temperature superconductors...