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Physicists in South Korea have honed their detector for hypothetical dark matter particles called axions by borrowing concepts from unlikely sources: strange constructs called metamaterials, and kirigami, a form of origami in which paper can be both cut and folded.

In kirigami, a piece of paper can be patterned to expand the same way, as Youn learned from a colleague’s father over dinner.

Ultimately, he found his inspiration in a book about the Japanese art of kirigami, a form of origami that incorporates cutting and slicing.

“One Fourth of July,” he recalled, “I went to the hammock in my backyard, and sketched out a bunch of concepts,” basing the sketches on the designs he’d seen in the kirigami book.

So, for example, a 2D kirigami sheet with a circular boundary will, when cut correctly, fold into a sphere.