A New Geometric Shape Travels to the International Space Station

A geometric model developed through a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics has just become the focus of one of the most remarkable experiments ever carried out in space. These “soft cells” are geometric forms capable of filling space without straight edges, and they also appear in biological structures. One of them, the f2 variant, was sent into space, and its behavior in microgravity surprised even the astronauts.

Soft cells were described in 2024 as a new class of geometric shapes that fill space without relying on sharp vertices. Their geometry resembles that of a polyhedron, but with one key difference: the faces do not need to be flat and the edges are not necessarily straight. In the f2 variant, the surfaces are “minimal,” similar to those formed when a soap film stretches across a wire frame, as shown in the image below.

The Geometric Shape Discovered in 2024