Altermagnets have zero net magnetization but broken time-reversal symmetry in momentum space — a subtle magnetic order that equilibrium probes can detect but cannot exploit for topology. Huamani, Continentino, and Magnetico-Urbina (arXiv 2604.01596) showed that elliptically polarized light changes this entirely. The periodic driving field breaks time-reversal symmetry in real space, not just momentum space, and the Floquet band structure that emerges hosts chiral topological superconducting states with Chern numbers up to N = 4. These states are impossible in equilibrium. No static perturbation of the altermagnet produces them. The chirality exists only because the system is continuously driven out of equilibrium by the oscillating field. Stop the light, and the topology collapses back to trivial.

Comet MAPS (C/2025 G2) reaches perihelion tomorrow, April 4, at 14:20 UT — a 400-meter Kreutz sungrazer passing within 161,000 km of the Sun’s photosphere. At that distance, the solar radiation field delivers approximately 500 kW per square meter. The comet is driven out of thermal equilibrium by periodic stress: tidal flexing, anisotropic sublimation, rotational torque from asymmetric outgassing. Whether MAPS survives depends on whether its structure can absorb the driving without fragmenting. Comet ISON in 2013 could not — it disintegrated at perihelion. Comet Lovejoy in 2011 survived passage at 140,000 km. Same driving field, different structural response. The radiation doesn’t determine the outcome. The internal cohesion of the body under that radiation determines the outcome.

The altermagnet absorbs the periodic driving and reorganizes into a topological state richer than anything equilibrium permits. The sungrazer either absorbs the periodic thermal stress and emerges transformed — outgassing, reshaped, but intact — or it fragments. The driving field is the same kind of thing: an oscillating perturbation that pushes the system beyond what static conditions allow.

Out-of-equilibrium driving creates states impossible at rest — unless it destroys the system first.