A dozen unusual substances with unique properties on the planet…. Unusual physical abilities of substances The most explosive substance

If you think that chemistry is a very boring science, then I advise you to look further at 7 very interesting and unusual chemical reactions that will definitely surprise you. Perhaps the gifs in the continuation of the post will be able to convince you, and you will stop thinking that chemistry is boring;) Look further.

Hypnotizing Bromic Acid

According to science, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is an “oscillatory chemical reaction”, during which “transition group metal ions catalyze the oxidation of various, usually organic, reducing agents with bromic acid in acidic aquatic environment”, which allows “to observe with the naked eye the formation of complex spatio-temporal structures”. it scientific explanation a hypnotic phenomenon that occurs when a little bromine is thrown into an acidic solution.

The acid turns the bromine into a chemical called bromide (which takes on a completely different hue), in turn, the bromide quickly turns back into bromine because the scientific elves that live inside it are overly stubborn assholes. The reaction repeats itself over and over again, allowing you to endlessly watch the movement of incredible undulating structures.

Transparent chemicals instantly turn black

Q: What happens when you mix sodium sulfite, citric acid and sodium iodide?
Correct answer below:

When you mix the above ingredients in certain proportions, you end up with a whimsical liquid that is initially transparent in color and then abruptly turns black. This experiment is called "Iodine Clock". Simply put, this reaction occurs when specific components are combined in such a way that their concentration gradually changes. If it reaches a certain threshold, the liquid becomes black.
But that's not all. By changing the proportion of ingredients, you have the opportunity to get a feedback:

In addition, with the help various substances and formulas (for example, as an option - the Briggs-Rauscher reaction), you can create a schizophrenic mixture that will constantly change its color from yellow to blue.

Creating plasma in the microwave

Do you want to do something fun with your friend but don't have access to a bunch of obscure chemicals or the basic knowledge needed to mix them safely? Do not despair! All you need for this experiment is grapes, a knife, a glass and a microwave. So, take a grape and cut it in half. Divide one of the pieces again with a knife into two parts so that these quarters remain bound by the peel. Put them in the microwave and cover with an upside down glass, turn on the oven. Then take a step back and watch the aliens steal the cut berry.

In fact, what is happening before your eyes is one way to create a very small amount of plasma. From school you know that there are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gaseous. Plasma, in fact, is the fourth type and is an ionized gas obtained by superheating ordinary gas. Grape juice, it turns out, is rich in ions, and therefore is one of the best and most affordable means for conducting simple scientific experiments.

However, be careful when trying to create a plasma in a microwave, because the ozone that forms inside the glass is large quantities can be toxic!

Lighting an extinguished candle through a smoky trail

You can try this trick at home without the risk of blowing up the living room or the whole house. Light a candle. Blow it out and immediately bring fire to the smoky trail. Congratulations: you succeeded, now you are a real master of fire.

It turns out that there is some love between fire and candle wax. And this feeling is much stronger than you think. It doesn't matter what state the wax is in - liquid, solid, gaseous - the fire will still find it, overtake it and burn it to hell.

Crystals that glow when crushed

Here is a chemical substance called europium-tetrakis, which demonstrates the effect of triboluminescence. However, it is better to see once than to read a hundred times.

This effect occurs during the destruction of crystalline bodies due to the conversion of kinetic energy directly into light.

If you want to see all this with your own eyes, but you don’t have europium tetrakis on hand, it doesn’t matter: even the most ordinary sugar will do. Just sit in a dark room, put some sugar cubes in the blender and enjoy the beauty of fireworks.

Back in the 18th century, when many people thought that ghosts or witches or the ghosts of witches caused scientific phenomena, scientists used this effect to play a trick on "mere mortals" by chewing sugar in the dark and laughing at those who ran from them like from fire. .

Hell monster emerging from a volcano

Mercury(II) thiocyanate is a seemingly innocent white powder, but as soon as it is set on fire, it immediately turns into a mythical monster, ready to devour you and the whole world.

The second reaction, pictured below, is caused by the combustion of ammonium dichromate, resulting in a miniature volcano.

Well, what happens if you mix the above two chemicals and set them on fire? See for yourself.

However, do not attempt these experiments at home, as both mercury(II) thiocyanate and ammonium dichromate are highly toxic and can cause serious harm to your health if burned. Take care of yourself!

laminar flow

If you mix coffee with milk, you end up with a liquid that you are unlikely to ever be able to separate into its constituent components again. And this applies to all substances that are in a liquid state, right? Right. But there is such a thing as laminar flow. To see this magic in action, just put a few drops of multi-colored dyes in a transparent container with corn syrup and gently mix everything ...

... and then mix again at the same pace, but now in the opposite direction.

Laminar flow can occur under any conditions and with different types of liquids, but in this case, this unusual phenomenon is due to the viscous properties of corn syrup, which, when mixed with dyes, forms multi-colored layers. So, if you just as carefully and slowly perform the action in the opposite direction, everything will return to its original place. It's like time travel!

"most extreme" option. Sure, we've all heard stories of magnets strong enough to injure kids from the inside and acids that will go through your hands in seconds, but there are even more "extreme" versions of them.

1. The blackest matter known to man

What happens if you put the edges of carbon nanotubes on top of each other and alternate layers of them? The result is a material that absorbs 99.9% of the light that hits it. The microscopic surface of the material is uneven and rough, which refracts light and is a poor reflective surface. After that try to use carbon nanotubes as superconductors in a certain order, which makes them excellent light absorbers, and you have a real black storm. Scientists are seriously puzzled by the potential applications of this substance, since, in fact, light is not "lost", the substance could be used to improve optical devices, such as telescopes, and even be used for solar panels operating at almost 100% efficiency.

2. The most combustible substance

Lots of things burn at amazing rates, like styrofoam, napalm, and that's just the beginning. But what if there was a substance that could set fire to the earth? On the one hand, this is a provocative question, but it was asked as a starting point. Chlorine trifluoride has the dubious reputation of being terribly flammable, though the Nazis thought it was too dangerous to work with. When people who discuss genocide believe that the purpose of their life is not to use something because it is too lethal, this encourages careful handling of these substances. It is said that one day a ton of substance was spilled and a fire started, and 30.5 cm of concrete and a meter of sand and gravel burned out until everything subsided. Unfortunately, the Nazis were right.

3. The most poisonous substance

Tell me, what would you least like to get on your face? It could very well be the most deadly poison, which will rightfully take 3rd place among the main extreme substances. Such a poison is really different from what burns through concrete, and from the strongest acid in the world (which will be invented soon). Although not entirely true, but you all, no doubt, heard from the medical community about Botox, and thanks to it the most deadly poison became famous. Botox uses botulinum toxin, which is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, and it is very deadly, and the amount of a grain of salt is enough to kill a person weighing 200 pounds (90.72 kg; approx. mixednews). In fact, scientists have calculated that it is enough to spray only 4 kg of this substance to kill all people on earth. Probably, an eagle would have acted much more humanely with a rattlesnake than this poison with a person.

4. The hottest substance

There are very few things in the world known to man to be hotter than the inside of a newly microwaved Hot Pocket, but this stuff seems set to break that record as well. Created by the collision of gold atoms at almost the speed of light, matter is called quark-gluon "soup" and it reaches a crazy 4 trillion degrees Celsius, which is almost 250,000 times hotter than the stuff inside the Sun. The amount of energy released in the collision would be enough to melt protons and neutrons, which in itself has features that you did not even suspect. Scientists say this stuff could give us a glimpse of what the birth of our universe was like, so it's worth understanding that tiny supernovae aren't created for fun. However, the really good news is that the "soup" spanned one trillionth of a centimeter and lasted for a trillionth of one trillionth of a second.

5. The most corrosive acid

Acid is a terrible substance, one of the scariest monsters in cinema was given acid blood to make it even more terrible than just a killing machine ("Alien"), so it is ingrained inside us that exposure to acid is very bad. If the "aliens" were filled with fluoride-antimonial acid, not only would they sink deep through the floor, but the fumes emitted from their dead bodies would kill everything around them. This acid is 21019 times stronger than sulphuric acid and can seep through glass. And it can explode if you add water. And during its reaction, poisonous fumes are released that can kill anyone in the room.

6 Most Explosive Explosives

In fact, this place is currently divided by two components: octogen and heptanitrocuban. Heptanitrocuban mainly exists in laboratories, and is similar to HMX, but has a denser crystal structure, which carries a greater potential for destruction. HMX, on the other hand, exists in large enough quantities that it can threaten physical existence. It is used in solid propellants for rockets, and even for detonators of nuclear weapons. And the last one is the most terrifying, because despite how easily it happens in the movies, starting a fission/fusion reaction that results in bright, glowing mushroom-like nuclear clouds is not an easy task, but HMX does an excellent job of it.

7. The most radioactive substance

Speaking of radiation, it's worth mentioning that the glowing green "plutonium" rods shown in The Simpsons are just a fantasy. Just because something is radioactive doesn't mean it glows. It's worth mentioning because "polonium-210" is so radioactive that it glows blue. Former Soviet spy Alexander Litvinenko was misled when the substance was added to his food and died of cancer shortly thereafter. This is not something you want to joke about, the glow is caused by the air around the substance that is being affected by the radiation, and indeed the objects around it can get hot. When we say "radiation", we think, for example, about nuclear reactor or an explosion where the fission reaction actually takes place. This is only the release of ionized particles, and not out of control splitting of atoms.

8. The heaviest substance

If you thought that the heaviest substance on earth was diamonds, that was a good but inaccurate guess. This is a technically created diamond nanorod. It is actually a collection of nano-scale diamonds, with the lowest degree of compression and the heaviest substance, known to man. It doesn't really exist, but which would be quite handy, since it means that someday we could cover our cars with this material and just get rid of it when a train collision occurs (an unrealistic event). This substance was invented in Germany in 2005 and will probably be used to the same extent as industrial diamonds, except for the fact that the new substance is more resistant to wear than ordinary diamonds.

9. The most magnetic substance

If the inductor were a small black piece, then this would be the same substance. The substance, developed in 2010 from iron and nitrogen, has magnetic abilities that are 18% greater than the previous "record holder" and is so powerful that it has forced scientists to rethink how magnetism works. The person who discovered this substance distanced himself from his studies so that none of the other scientists could reproduce his work, as it was reported that a similar compound was being developed in Japan in the past in 1996, but other physicists were unable to reproduce it, therefore officially this substance was not accepted. It is unclear whether Japanese physicists should promise to make Sepuku under these circumstances. If this substance can be reproduced, it could mean new Age efficient electronics and magnetic motors, possibly increased in power by an order of magnitude.

10. The strongest superfluidity

Superfluidity is a state of matter (like a solid or gaseous) that occurs at extremely low temperatures, has high thermal conductivity (every ounce of this substance must be at exactly the same temperature) and no viscosity. Helium-2 is the most characteristic representative. The helium-2 cup will spontaneously rise and spill out of the container. Helium-2 will also seep through other solid materials, since the total lack of friction allows it to flow through other invisible holes through which ordinary helium (or water for this case). "Helium-2" does not come into its proper state at number 1, as if it has the ability to act on its own, although it is also the most efficient thermal conductor on Earth, several hundred times better than copper. Heat moves so fast through "helium-2" that it travels in waves, like sound (actually known as "second sound"), rather than dissipates, it just moves from one molecule to another. By the way, the forces that govern the ability of "helium-2" to crawl along the wall are called the "third sound". You are unlikely to have anything more extreme than the substance that required the definition of 2 new types of sound.

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We can laugh at our ancestors who considered gunpowder to be magic and did not understand what magnets were, however, in our enlightened age, there are materials created by science, but similar to the result of real witchcraft. These materials are often difficult to obtain, but worth it.

1. Metal that melts in your hands

The existence of liquid metals such as mercury and the ability of metals to become liquid at a certain temperature are well known. But solid metal melting in the hands like ice cream is an unusual phenomenon. This metal is called gallium. It melts at room temperature and is unsuitable for practical use. If you place an object made of gallium in a glass of hot liquid, it will dissolve right before your eyes. In addition, gallium can make aluminum very brittle - just place a drop of gallium on an aluminum surface.

2. Gas capable of holding solid objects

This gas is heavier than air, and if you fill a closed container with it, it will settle to the bottom. Just like water, sulfur hexafluoride can withstand less dense objects, for example, a foil boat. The colorless gas will hold the object on its surface and give the impression that the boat is floating. Sulfur hexafluoride can be scooped out of the container with an ordinary glass - then the boat will smoothly sink to the bottom.

In addition, due to its gravity, the gas reduces the frequency of any sound passing through it, and if you inhale a little sulfur hexafluoride, your voice will sound like Dr. Evil's sinister baritone.

3. Hydrophobic coatings

The green tile in the photo is not jelly at all, but tinted water. It is located on a flat plate, treated with a hydrophobic coating along the edges. The coating repels water, and the drops take on a convex shape. There is a perfect raw square in the middle of the white surface and the water collects there. A drop placed on the treated area will immediately flow to the untreated area and merge with the rest of the water. If you dip your hydrophobic-coated finger into a glass of water, it will remain completely dry, and a "bubble" will form around it - the water will desperately try to run away from you. On the basis of such substances, it is planned to create water-repellent clothing and glass for cars.

4 Spontaneously Exploding Powder

Triiodine nitride looks like a ball of dirt, but appearances are deceiving: this material is so unstable that a light touch of a pen is enough to cause an explosion. The material is used exclusively for experiments - it is dangerous even to move it from place to place. When the material explodes, beautiful purple smoke appears. A similar substance is silver fulminate - it is also not used anywhere and is only suitable for making bombs.

Hot ice, also known as sodium acetate, is a liquid that hardens on the slightest impact. From a simple touch, it instantly transforms from a liquid state into an ice-hard crystal. Patterns form on the entire surface, as on windows in frost, the process continues for several seconds - until all the substance “freezes”. When pressed, a crystallization center is formed, from which information about the new state is transmitted to the molecules along the chain. Of course, the result is not ice at all - as the name implies, the substance is quite warm to the touch, cools very slowly and is used to make chemical heating pads.

6Memory Metal

Nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium, has an impressive ability to "remember" its original shape and return to it after being deformed. All it takes is a little heat. For example, you can drop warm water on the alloy, and it will return to its original shape, no matter how much it was previously distorted. Methods for its practical application are currently being developed. For example, it would be wise to make glasses from such a material - if they accidentally bend, you just need to substitute them under a stream of warm water. Of course, it is not known whether cars or something else serious will ever be made from nitinol, but the properties of the alloy are impressive.

Most people will easily name the three classical states of matter: liquid, solid, and gaseous. Those who know a little science will add plasma to these three. But over time, scientists have expanded the list of possible states of matter beyond these four. In the process, we learned a lot about the Big Bang, lightsabers, and the secret state of matter hidden in the humble chicken.

Amorphous solids are a rather interesting subset of the well-known solid state. In a typical solid object, the molecules are well organized and don't have much room to move. This gives the solid a high viscosity, which is a measure of flow resistance. Liquids, on the other hand, have a disorganized molecular structure that allows them to flow, spread, change shape, and take on the shape of the container they are in. Amorphous solids are somewhere between these two states. In the process of vitrification, liquids cool down and their viscosity increases until the moment when the substance no longer flows like a liquid, but its molecules remain disordered and do not take on a crystalline structure, like ordinary solids.

The most common example of an amorphous solid is glass. For thousands of years people have been making glass from silicon dioxide. When glassmakers cool silica from its liquid state, it doesn't actually solidify when it drops below its melting point. As the temperature drops, the viscosity rises and the substance appears to be harder. However, its molecules still remain disordered. And then the glass becomes amorphous and solid at the same time. This transitional process allowed artisans to create beautiful and surreal glass structures.

What is the functional difference between amorphous solids and the usual solid state? AT Everyday life it's not very noticeable. Glass appears to be perfectly solid until you examine it at the molecular level. And the myth that glass flows over time is not worth a penny. Most often, this myth is reinforced by the arguments that the old glass in churches seems thicker in the lower part, but this is due to the imperfection of the glass blowing process at the time of creation of these glasses. However, studying amorphous solids like glass is interesting from a scientific point of view for studying phase transitions and molecular structure.

Supercritical fluids (fluids)

Most phase transitions occur at a certain temperature and pressure. It is common knowledge that an increase in temperature eventually turns a liquid into a gas. However, when pressure increases with temperature, the fluid makes a leap into the realm of supercritical fluids, which have the properties of both a gas and a liquid. For example, supercritical fluids can pass through solids as a gas, but can also act as a solvent as a liquid. Interestingly, a supercritical fluid can be made more like a gas or a liquid, depending on the combination of pressure and temperature. This has allowed scientists to find many uses for supercritical fluids.

Although supercritical fluids are not as common as amorphous solids, you probably interact with them just as often as you would with glass. Supercritical carbon dioxide is loved by brewing companies for its ability to act as a solvent when interacting with hops, and coffee companies use it to produce better decaffeinated coffee. Supercritical fluids have also been used for more efficient hydrolysis and to keep power plants running at higher temperatures. In general, you probably use supercritical fluid by-products every day.

degenerate gas

Although amorphous solids are at least found on planet Earth, degenerate matter is found only in certain types of stars. A degenerate gas exists when the external pressure of a substance is determined not by temperature, as on Earth, but by complex quantum principles, in particular, the Pauli principle. Because of this, the external pressure of the degenerate matter will be maintained even if the temperature of the matter drops to absolute zero. Two main types of degenerate matter are known: electron-degenerate and neutron-degenerate matter.

Electronically degenerate matter exists mainly in white dwarfs. It is formed in the core of a star when the mass of matter around the core tries to compress the core's electrons to a lower energy state. However, according to the Pauli principle, two identical particles cannot be in the same energy state. Thus, the particles "repel" matter around the nucleus, creating pressure. This is possible only if the mass of the star is less than 1.44 solar masses. When a star exceeds this limit (known as the Chandrasekhar limit), it simply collapses into a neutron star or black hole.

When a star collapses and becomes neutron star, it no longer has electron-degenerate matter, it consists of neutron-degenerate matter. Because a neutron star is heavy, electrons fuse with protons in its core to form neutrons. Free neutrons (neutrons are not bound in atomic nucleus) have a half-life of 10.3 minutes. But in the core of a neutron star, the mass of the star allows neutrons to exist outside the cores, forming neutron-degenerate matter.

Other exotic forms of degenerate matter may also exist, including strange matter that may exist in the rare form of stars, quark stars. Quark stars are the stage between the neutron star and the black hole, where the quarks in the core are unbound and form a soup of free quarks. We have not yet observed this type of star, but physicists admit their existence.

Superfluidity

Let's go back to Earth to discuss superfluids. Superfluidity is a state of matter that exists in certain isotopes of helium, rubidium, and lithium, cooled to near absolute zero. This state is similar to a Bose-Einstein condensate (Bose-Einstein condensate, BEC), with a few differences. Some BECs are superfluid and some superfluids are BECs, but not all are identical.

Liquid helium is known for its superfluidity. When helium is cooled to the "lambda point" of -270 degrees Celsius, some of the liquid becomes superfluid. If most substances are cooled to a certain point, the attraction between the atoms overcomes the thermal vibrations in the substance, allowing them to form a solid structure. But helium atoms interact with each other so weakly that they can remain liquid at a temperature of almost absolute zero. It turns out that at this temperature, the characteristics of individual atoms overlap, giving rise to strange properties of superfluidity.

Superfluids do not have intrinsic viscosity. Superfluid substances placed in a test tube begin to crawl up the sides of the test tube, seemingly violating the laws of gravity and surface tension. Liquid helium leaks easily, as it can slip through even microscopic holes. Superfluidity also has strange thermodynamic properties. In this state, substances have zero thermodynamic entropy and infinite thermal conductivity. This means that two superfluid substances cannot be thermally distinct. If heat is added to a superfluid substance, it will conduct it so quickly that thermal waves are formed that are not characteristic of ordinary liquids.

Bose-Einstein condensate

The Bose-Einstein condensate is probably one of the most famous obscure forms of matter. First, we need to understand what bosons and fermions are. A fermion is a particle with a half-integer spin (like an electron) or a composite particle (like a proton). These particles obey the Pauli principle, which allows the existence of electron-degenerate matter. A boson, however, has a full integer spin, and several bosons can occupy one quantum state. Bosons include any force-carrying particles (such as photons), as well as some atoms, including helium-4 and other gases. Elements in this category are known as bosonic atoms.

In the 1920s, Albert Einstein took the work of Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose to propose new form matter. Einstein's original theory was that if you cool certain elemental gases to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, their wave functions will merge, creating one "superatom". Such a substance will exhibit quantum effects at the macroscopic level. But it wasn't until the 1990s that the technology needed to cool elements to these temperatures emerged. In 1995, scientists Eric Cornell and Carl Wiemann were able to fuse 2,000 atoms into a Bose-Einstein condensate that was large enough to be seen under a microscope.

Bose-Einstein condensates are closely related to superfluids, but also have their own set of unique properties. It's also funny that the BEC can slow down the normal speed of light. In 1998, Harvard scientist Lene Howe was able to slow light down to 60 kilometers per hour by passing a laser through a cigar-shaped BEC sample. In later experiments, Howe's group succeeded in completely stopping the light in the BEC by turning off the laser as the light passed through the sample. These opened up a new field of communication based on light and quantum computing.

Jan-Teller metals

Jahn-Teller metals are the newest baby in the world of states of matter, as scientists were only able to successfully create them for the first time in 2015. If the experiments are confirmed by other laboratories, these metals could change the world, as they have the properties of both an insulator and a superconductor.

Scientists led by chemist Cosmas Prassides experimented by introducing rubidium into the structure of carbon-60 molecules (popularly known as fullerenes), which caused the fullerenes to take on a new form. This metal is named after the Jahn-Teller effect, which describes how pressure can change the geometric shape of molecules in new electronic configurations. In chemistry, pressure is achieved not only by squeezing something, but also by adding new atoms or molecules to a pre-existing structure, changing its basic properties.

When Prassides' research group began adding rubidium to carbon-60 molecules, the carbon molecules changed from insulators to semiconductors. However, due to the Jahn-Teller effect, the molecules tried to stay in the old configuration, which created a substance that tried to be an insulator, but had the electrical properties of a superconductor. The transition between an insulator and a superconductor was never considered until these experiments began.

The interesting thing about Jahn-Teller metals is that they become superconductors at high temperatures (-135 degrees Celsius, not at 243.2 degrees as usual). This brings them closer to acceptable levels for mass production and experimentation. If all is confirmed, perhaps we will be one step closer to creating superconductors that work at room temperature, which, in turn, will revolutionize many areas of our lives.

Photonic matter

For many decades it was believed that photons are massless particles that do not interact with each other. However, over the past few years, scientists at MIT and Harvard have discovered new ways to "endow" light with mass - and even create "" that bounce off each other and bind together. Some felt that this was the first step towards the creation of a lightsaber.

The science of photonic matter is a little more complicated, but it is quite possible to comprehend it. Scientists began to create photonic matter by experimenting with supercooled rubidium gas. When a photon shoots through the gas, it is reflected and interacts with rubidium molecules, losing energy and slowing down. After all, the photon exits the cloud very slowly.

Strange things start to happen when you send two photons through a gas, which creates a phenomenon known as Rydberg blockade. When an atom is excited by a photon, nearby atoms cannot be excited to the same extent. The excited atom is in the path of the photon. In order for an atom nearby to be excited by a second photon, the first photon must pass through the gas. Photons do not normally interact with each other, but when they encounter a Rydberg blockade, they push each other through the gas, exchanging energy and interacting with each other. From the outside, photons appear to have mass and act as a single molecule, although they remain in fact massless. When photons come out of the gas, they appear to coalesce, like a molecule of light.

The practical application of photonic matter is still in question, but it will certainly be found. Maybe even lightsabers.

Disordered hyperhomogeneity

When trying to determine whether a substance is in a new state, scientists look at the structure of the substance as well as its properties. In 2003, Salvatore Torquato and Frank Stillinger of Princeton University proposed a new state of matter known as disordered hyperhomogeneity. Although this phrase seems to be an oxymoron, at its core it suggests new type matter that appears disordered on closer inspection, but hyperhomogeneous and structured from a distance. Such a substance must have the properties of a crystal and a liquid. At first glance, this already exists in plasmas and liquid hydrogen, but recently scientists have found a natural example where no one expected: in a chicken eye.

Chickens have five cones in their retinas. Four detect color and one is responsible for light levels. However, unlike the human eye or the hexagonal eyes of insects, these cones are scattered randomly, with no real order. This is because the cones in the eye of a chicken have alienation zones around them, which do not allow two cones of the same type to be side by side. Due to the exclusion zone and the shape of the cones, they cannot form ordered crystal structures (as in solids), but when all the cones are considered as one, they appear to have a highly ordered pattern, as seen in the Princeton images below. Thus, we can describe these cones in the retina of a chicken eye as liquid when viewed up close, and as solid when viewed from afar. This is different from the amorphous solids we talked about above, because this ultra-homogeneous material will act as a liquid, and the amorphous solid- No.

Scientists are still investigating this new state of matter because it may also be more common than originally thought. Now scientists at Princeton University are trying to adapt such ultra-homogeneous materials to create self-organizing structures and light detectors that respond to light with a certain wavelength.

String networks

What state of matter is the vacuum of space? Most people don't think about it, but for the past ten years, Xiao Gang-Wen of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Levin of Harvard proposed a new state of matter that could lead us to the discovery of fundamental particles beyond the electron.

The path to developing a string-net fluid model began in the mid-90s, when a group of scientists proposed the so-called quasi-particles, which seemed to have appeared in an experiment when electrons passed between two semiconductors. There was a stir as the quasi-particles acted as if they had a fractional charge, which seemed impossible for the physics of the time. Scientists analyzed the data and suggested that the electron is not a fundamental particle of the universe and that there are fundamental particles that we have not yet discovered. This work brought them Nobel Prize, but later it turned out that an error in the experiment crept into the results of their work. About quasiparticles safely forgotten.

But not all. Wen and Levin took the idea of quasiparticles as a basis and proposed a new state of matter, the string-network state. The main property of such a state is quantum entanglement. As with disordered hyperhomogeneity, if you look closely at string-network matter, it looks like a disordered collection of electrons. But if you look at it as a whole structure, you will see a high order due to the quantum entangled properties of the electrons. Wen and Levin then expanded their work to cover other particles and properties of entanglement.

After running computer models for the new state of matter, Wen and Levin discovered that the ends of string networks can produce a variety of subatomic particles, including the legendary "quasiparticles." An even bigger surprise was that when the string-net substance vibrates, it does this in accordance with the Maxwell equations responsible for light. Wen and Levin proposed that the cosmos is filled with string networks of entangled subatomic particles, and that the ends of these string networks represent the subatomic particles that we observe. They also suggested that the string-network liquid can provide the existence of light. If the vacuum of space is filled with a string-net fluid, this could allow us to combine light and matter.

All this may seem very far-fetched, but in 1972 (decades before the string-net proposals), geologists discovered a strange material in Chile - herbertsmithite. In this mineral, the electrons form triangular structures that seem to contradict everything we know about how electrons interact with each other. In addition, this triangular structure was predicted by the string-network model, and the scientists worked with artificial herbertsmithite to accurately confirm the model.

Quark-gluon plasma

Speaking of the last state of matter on this list, consider the state that started it all: quark-gluon plasma. AT early universe the state of matter was significantly different from the classical one. To start, a little background.

Quarks are elementary particles, which we find inside hadrons (for example, protons and neutrons). Hadrons are made up of either three quarks or one quark and one antiquark. Quarks have fractional charges and are held together by gluons, which are the exchange particles of the strong nuclear force.

We do not see free quarks in nature, but immediately after big bang for a millisecond free quarks and gluons existed. During this time, the temperature of the universe was so high that quarks and gluons moved almost at the speed of light. During this period, the universe consisted entirely of this hot quark-gluon plasma. After another fraction of a second, the universe has cooled down enough to form heavy particles like hadrons, and quarks begin to interact with each other and gluons. From that moment, the formation of the Universe known to us began, and hadrons began to bind with electrons, creating primitive atoms.

Already in modern universe scientists tried to recreate the quark-gluon plasma in large particle accelerators. During these experiments, heavy particles like hadrons collided with each other, creating a temperature at which quarks separated for a short time. In the course of these experiments, we learned a lot about the properties of quark-gluon plasma, in which there was absolutely no friction and which was more like a liquid than ordinary plasma. Experiments with an exotic state of matter allow us to learn a lot about how and why our universe formed as we know it.

Sourced from listverse.com

Amazing substances with interesting chemical and physical properties that are created by science.

Metal that melts in your hands.

A gas capable of holding solid objects.

This gas is heavier than air, and if you fill a closed container with it, it will settle to the bottom. Just like water, sulfur hexafluoride is able to withstand less dense objects, such as a foil boat. The colorless gas will hold the object on its surface and give the impression that the boat is floating. Sulfur hexafluoride can be scooped out of the container with an ordinary glass - then the boat will smoothly sink to the bottom.

hydrophobic coatings.

Spontaneously exploding powder.

Hot Ice.

Memory metal.