A new definition of a crystal structure clarifies the past ambiguities in crystallography
What is it about?
The paper rigorously defines the concept of a crystal structure as a class of all different but rigidly equivalent representations of crystals. The recent invariant descriptors distinguish all periodic crystals in major databases of experimental structures and theoretically distinguish all (infinitely many) generic periodic structures.
Why is it important?
Any (near-)duplicates and potential fraudulent structures can be quickly detected by the new invariants to restore the public trust in crystallography, which was lost because of artificial tools and `paper mills', https://cen.acs.org/research-integrity/Crystallography-databases-hunt-fraudulent-structures/102/i8. The underlying Crystal Isometry Principle (CRISP) is a new law of nature that allows to map all real periodic structures in a common continuous space similar to a map of stars in the simpler 3-dimensional universe.