Scientists have created, yet another state of matter! It’s called SupperSolid and while it sounds like a solid, it’s not. SupperSolid is basically a supper fluid that got it’s Molecules together.The researchers who created the new state of matter took a Bose-Einstein Condensate made of Sodium gas and used a laser to cool it to near absolute zero. The atoms are moving extremely slowly. An interesting fact a BEC ( Bose-Einstein Condensate ) is a special phase of matter created in 2001 winning researchers the Nobel Prize for Physics. Well once cooled to a BEC, the Sodium FLOWED with ZERO FRICTION. It’s like a Supper-Fluid, Which is awesome.The BEC was also superconductive, meaning its electrons moved through it with ZERO RESISTANCE.
In this research, the scientists kept cooling the sodium and at some point, It’s arranged into a non-crystalline “Solid”. The scientists called it a superfluid flow with”Long-Range Spatial Periodicity Of A Solid.” Those are some fancy science words. Just think of it like a coffee cup filled with a frictionless, superconducting gel that if you could stir it, it would ever stop moving round and round and round, it will never stop going around.
The “Fluid” didn’t suddenly become hard, instate, it’s not exactly solid think of it like GEL. It’s a fluid but it behaves like a solid. They have still got a lot to learn about these fluid / Solid. But according to their paper their supersolid [Quote] “establishes a system with continuous symmetry-breaking properties, associated collective excitation and superfluid behaviour.” Let’s break it down. The superfluid behaviour you get is frictionless superconductor. Collective excitations is a fancy way to say quasiparticles, Quasiparticles are a group of particles that behave as if they are ONE because their parts are interacting somehow. Symmetry-Breaking, It’s also describing particle movement, Normally in quantum mechanics, symmetry is a big deal and breaking It is a bigger deal.
At the moment, it continues the old saying, ” The closer you look the stranger things get.” The states of matter solid, liquid and gas that you have been living with your whole life were never all there were. It’s kind of like you are learning math, First, you are taught numbers, then they tell you there are infinitely many numbers, Then they tell you there are infinitely negative numbers too and then you find out there are irrational numbers and imaginary number and you can do calculation with infinities and embed equation into each other.
Matters are like that Solid, liquid, Gas and Plasma exist but It’s actually about the molecular arrangement. Solid are interacting heavily, liquids are loosey-goosey and gases are just barely interacting, while plasma is “Free” it can do anything. But on top of those four, there are several more. Cold ones like the Bose-Einstein Condensate and SupperSolid and Hot once like Electron-Degenerate matter or the theorized strange matter and states like time Crystals, which have low energy states and weird effects across time symmetry.
We don’t have six or seven states of matter, we have at least a dozen, there are just more out there, experimental, laboratory-only or extreme kind of matter. Our Universe Is Pretty Awesome.