How cool! From the title it didn't seem groundbreaking, but this is quite odd!<p>"Until now, it was thought that an influx of external energy, such as shaking the bag, was necessary to create the Brazil nut effect. However, theoretical models being developed suggested that the phenomenon could occur spontaneously, without the supply of external energy. The theoretical calculations were confirmed experimentally for the first time by a group of experimental and theoretical physicists from the University of Utrecht and the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw. The results of the study appeared in a paper published in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America(PNAS).<p>“We have shown that the Brazil nut effect can take place in a mixture of charged colloidal particles driven solely by Brownian motions and repulsion of electric charges,” emphasizes Jeffrey Everts from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw..."