The Six States Of Matters

Hey Friends…

It was once believed that there were only three states of matter namely solid, liquid and gas. But slowly as the years passed by the fourth state of matter Plasma was discovered. But discoveries never end. Many scientist were in the pursuit of finding a new state of matter… The result was the discovery of two other states of matter, viz. Filament state and  Bose-Einstein Condensate (shortly known as BEC).

Being familiar with the first four states, let me detail the properties of the latter two states.

Filaments

Filaments, the fifth state of matter, is a parallel beam of either electrons or ions. Unlike the first four states, in filaments, the particles execute an one dimensional harmonic motion. The energy of these particles range from 10⁵ eV to 10²⁶  (higher than that of plasma). Thus, filament has got the highest energy particles in it.  Despite this enormous energy, filaments never emit heat radiations. Bodies in this state, mostly have a circular cross section or a  bent shape. The most amazing thing about this state is that, it is not attracted by the gravitational pull (even by a black hole).

 Corona (Celestial filament) 

The above figure, shows the coronal loop on the surface of the sun. This is an example of ionic filament. Solar corona is positively charged.  Above all, a strange fact is that the solar corona is neither hot nor cold… Quite interesting, isn’t it?

  Lightning (Terrestrial Filament)

The lightning, as we know,  is a stream of electron. But, do we know that it is also a filament? Yes, lightning is an example of electronic filament.

 Lots of researches are on in this field. There are many unsolved mysteries for the past 60 yrs, regarding filaments.

Bose-Einstein Condensate

This is a special state of matter, made up of particles known as bosons. These particles obey Bose-Einstein statistics.  According to Wikipedia, A Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of a dilute gas of weakly interacting bosons confined in an external potential and cooled to temperatures very near absolute zero (0 K or −273.15 °C). When the temperature of a system of atoms is cooled to the absolute temperature, all the atoms become motionless. Thus, the thermal energy of each particle becomes zero. Eventually, an individual particle loses its identity. Hence, if you want to trace a particular particle, you cannot. Moreover, one particle easily interchanges with the other. So, it is impossible to track a particular particle.

At this extremely low temperature, the bosons stick together and become immobile.  As the particles are immobile, they do not emit any thermal radiation. BEC can defy gravity, in that, when kept on a surface, it starts flowing upwards.

Superconductors and Superfluid are the best known examples of BEC.

                           

            Superfluids                                                      Superconductor

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