The most unusual substance in the world. A dozen of unusual substances with unique properties on the planet ... Unusual substances

There are many amazing things and unusual materials in the world, but these may well qualify for participation in the category "the most amazing among people invented." Of course, these substances "violate" the rules of physics only at first glance, in fact, everything has been scientifically explained long ago, although this substance does not become less surprising.

Substances that violate the rules of physics:

1. Ferrofluid Is a magnetic fluid from which very curious and intricate figures can be formed. However, while there is no magnetic field, the ferrofluid is viscous and unremarkable. But as soon as you influence it with a magnetic field, its particles line up along the lines of force - and create something indescribable ...

2. Airgel Frozen Smoke ("Frozen smoke") is 99 percent air and 1 percent silicon anhydride. The result is very impressive magic: bricks hanging in the air and all that. Moreover, this gel is also fireproof.

While almost invisible, the airgel can hold almost incredible weights, which is 4,000 times the volume of the consumed substance, and it is itself very light. It is used in space: for example, to "catch" dust from comet tails and to "warm" astronaut suits. In the future, scientists say, it will appear in many homes: a very convenient material.

3.Perfluorocarbon Is a liquid that holds a large amount of oxygen, and which, in fact, can be breathed. The substance was tested back in the 60s of the last century: on mice, demonstrating a certain degree of effectiveness. Unfortunately, only a definite one: laboratory mice died after several hours spent in containers with liquid. Scientists have come to the conclusion that impurities are to blame ...

Today, perfluorocarbons are used for ultrasound and even artificial blood. In no case should the substance be used uncontrollably: it is not the most environmentally friendly. The atmosphere, for example, "warms up" 6500 times more actively than carbon dioxide.

4.Elastic conductors are made from a "mix" of ionic liquid and carbon nanotubes. Scientists are not overjoyed with this invention: after all, in fact, these conductors can stretch without losing their properties, and then return to their original size, as if nothing had happened. And this gives reason to seriously think about all sorts of elastic gadgets.

5. Non-newtonian fluid - This is a liquid that you can walk on: from the application of force, it hardens. Scientists are looking for a way to apply this ability of a non-Newtonian fluid to the design of military equipment and uniforms. So that the soft and comfortable fabric becomes hard under the action of a bullet - and turns into a bulletproof vest.

6. Transparent aluminum oxide and at the same time they plan to use strong metal both to create more advanced army equipment, and in the automotive industry and even in the production of windows. Why not: it can be seen well, and it does not beat.

7.Carbon nanotubes have already been present in the fourth paragraph of the article, and now - a new meeting. And all because their possibilities are really wide, and you can talk about all sorts of charms for hours. In particular, it is the most durable of all materials invented by man.

With the help of this material, ultra-strong filaments, ultra-compact computer processors and much, much more are already being created, and in the future the pace will only increase: super-efficient batteries, even more efficient solar panels and even a cable for the space elevator of the future ...

8.Hydrophobic sand and hydrophobicity is a physical property of a molecule that "seeks" to avoid contact with water. The molecule itself in this case is called hydrophobic.

Hydrophobic molecules are usually non-polar and "prefer" to be among other neutral molecules and non-polar solvents. Therefore, water on a hydrophobic surface with a high wetting angle is collected in drops, and oil, getting into a reservoir, is distributed over its surface.

If you think 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;) We look further.

Hypnotizing bromic acid

According to science, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is an “oscillatory chemical reaction”, during which “transitional metal ions catalyze the oxidation of various, usually organic, reducing agents with bromic acid in an acidic aqueous medium”, which allows “to observe with the naked eye the formation of complex space-time structures ". This is the scientific explanation for the hypnotic phenomenon that occurs when you throw a little bromine into an acidic solution.

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

Transparent chemicals turn black instantly

Q: what happens when you mix sodium sulfite, citric acid and sodium iodide?
The correct answer is at the bottom:

When you mix the aforementioned ingredients in certain proportions, you end up with a whimsical liquid, which at first has a transparent color, and then suddenly 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 turns black.
But that's not all. By changing the proportion of ingredients, you have the opportunity to get a reverse reaction:

In addition, with the help of 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 you 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 are grapes, a knife, a glass and a microwave. So, take a grape and cut it in half. Divide one of the pieces with a knife into two parts again so that these quarters remain tied with a peel. Place them in the microwave and cover with an inverted glass, turn on the oven. Then take a step back and watch as aliens kidnap the cut berry.

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

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

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 set fire to the smoky trail. Congratulations: you did it, now you are a true master of fire.

It turns out that there is some kind of love between fire and candle wax. And this feeling is much stronger than you think. No 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 during crushing

This is a chemical called europium tetrakis, which exhibits the effect of triboluminescence. However, it is better to see once than read a hundred times.

This effect occurs when crystalline bodies are destroyed due to the conversion of kinetic energy directly into light.

If you want to see all this with your own eyes, but you do not have europium-tetrakis at hand, it does not matter: even the most common sugar will do. Just sit in a dark room, put some sugar cubes in a blender and enjoy the beauty of the fireworks.

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

Infernal monster emerging from the 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 swallow you and the whole world.

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

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

However, do not try these experiments at home, as both mercury (II) thiocyanate and ammonium dichromate are very toxic and can seriously harm your health if burnt. Take care of yourself!

Laminar flow

If you mix coffee with milk, you end up with a liquid that you’re unlikely to ever be able to separate 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 place a few drops of colorful dyes in a transparent container of corn syrup and mix everything gently ...

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

Laminar flow can occur under any conditions and using different types of fluids, 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. Sounds like time travel!

In this (2007 - P.Z.) year we want to tell you, dear readers, about water. This series of articles will be called the Water Cycle. There is probably no point in talking about how important this substance is for all natural sciences and for each of us. It is no coincidence that many are trying to speculate on their interest in water, take at least the sensational film "The Great Secret of Water", which attracted the attention of millions of people. On the other hand, one cannot simplify the situation and say that we know everything about water; this is not at all the case; water was and remains the most unusual substance in the world. To consider in detail the features of water, you need a thorough conversation. And we begin with its chapters from the wonderful book of the founder of our journal, academician I.V. Petryanova-Sokolova, which was published by the publishing house "Pedagogy" in 1975. This book, by the way, may well serve as an example of a popular science conversation between a prominent scientist and such a difficult reader as a high school student.

Is everything already known about water?

Quite recently, in the 30s of our century, chemists were sure that the composition of water was well known to them. But one day one of them had to measure the density of the remaining water after electrolysis. He was surprised: the density was several hundred-thousandths higher than normal. There is nothing insignificant in science. This tiny difference demanded an explanation. As a result, scientists have discovered many new big secrets of nature. They learned that water is very complex. New isotopic forms of water have been found. Extracted from ordinary heavy water; it turned out that it is absolutely necessary for the energy of the future: in a thermonuclear reaction, deuterium released from a liter of water will give as much energy as 120 kg of coal. Physicists in all countries of the world are now working hard and tirelessly to solve this great problem. It all started with a simple measurement of the most ordinary, everyday and uninteresting quantity - the density of water was measured more accurately by an extra decimal place. Each new, more accurate measurement, each new correct calculation, each new observation not only increases confidence in the knowledge and reliability of what has already been obtained and known, but also pushes the boundaries of the unknown and not yet known and paves new paths to them.

What is ordinary water?

There is no such water in the world. There is no ordinary water anywhere. She is always extraordinary. Even in isotopic composition, water in nature is always different. The composition depends on the history of water - on what happened to it in the endless variety of its circulation in nature. By evaporation, the water is enriched with protium, and the rain water is therefore different from the lake water. The river water is not like sea water. In closed lakes, the water contains more deuterium than the water of mountain streams. Each source has its own isotopic composition of water. When the water in the lake freezes in winter, no one who skates suspects that the isotopic composition of the ice has changed: the content of heavy hydrogen in it has decreased, but the amount of heavy oxygen has increased. Water from melting ice is different and different from the water from which the ice was obtained.

What is light water?

This is the same water, the formula of which all schoolchildren know - H 2 16 O. But there is no such water in nature. Scientists prepared such water with great difficulty. They needed it to accurately measure the properties of water, and primarily to measure its density. So far, such water exists only in a few of the largest laboratories in the world, where the properties of various isotopic compounds are studied.

What is Heavy Water?

And this water does not exist in nature. Strictly speaking, it would be necessary to call heavy water, consisting only of some heavy isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen, D 2 18 O, but there is no such water even in the laboratories of scientists. Of course, if this water is needed by science or technology, scientists will be able to find a way to get it: there is as much deuterium and heavy oxygen in natural water as necessary.

In science and nuclear technology, it is customary to conventionally call heavy water heavy water. It contains only deuterium, there is absolutely no ordinary, light isotope of hydrogen in it. The oxygen isotopic composition in this water usually corresponds to the composition of atmospheric oxygen.

Until quite recently, no one in the world even suspected that such water existed, and now in many countries of the world there are giant factories that process millions of tons of water to extract deuterium from it and get pure heavy water.

Are there many different waters in water?

What water? In the one that pours from the tap, where it came from the river, heavy water D 2 16 O is about 150 g per ton, and heavy oxygen (H 2 17 O and H 2 18 O together) is almost 1800 g per ton of water. And in the water from the Pacific Ocean, heavy water is almost 165 g per ton.

In a ton of ice of one of the large glaciers of the Caucasus, heavy water is 7 g more than in river water, and there is the same amount of heavy oxygen water. But on the other hand, in the water of streams running along this glacier, D 2 16 O was 7 g less, and H 2 18 O - 23 g more than in the river.

Tritium water T 2 16 O falls to the ground along with precipitation, but it is very small - only 1 g per million million tons of rainwater. There is even less of it in ocean water.

Strictly speaking, water is always and everywhere different. Even in the snow falling on different days, the isotopic composition is different. Of course, the difference is small, only 1-2 g per ton. Only, perhaps, it is very difficult to say whether it is a little or a lot.

What is the difference between light natural and heavy water?

The answer to this question will depend on who it is asked to. Each of us has no doubt that he is familiar with water well. If each of us is shown three glasses with ordinary, heavy and light water, then each will give a completely clear and definite answer: in all three vessels there is simple clean water. It is equally transparent and colorless. Neither taste nor smell can you find any difference between them. It's all water. The chemist will answer this question in much the same way: there is almost no difference between the two. All their chemical properties are almost indistinguishable: in each of these waters, sodium will equally release hydrogen, each of them will decompose in the same way during electrolysis, all their chemical properties will almost coincide. This is understandable: after all, their chemical composition is the same. This is water.

The physicist will disagree. He will point out a noticeable difference in their physical properties: they boil and freeze at different temperatures, their density is different, the pressure of their vapor is also slightly different. And during electrolysis, they decompose at different rates. Light water is a little faster, and heavy water is slower. The difference in speed is negligible, but the remainder of the water in the electrolytic cell is slightly enriched in heavy water. In this way it was discovered. Changes in isotopic composition have little effect on the physical properties of a substance. Those of them that depend on the mass of the molecules change more noticeably, for example, the diffusion rate of vapor molecules.

The biologist, perhaps, will be at a dead end and will not be able to find an answer right away. He will need to work on the issue of the difference between water with different isotopic compositions. Quite recently, everyone believed that living beings could not live in heavy water. They even called it dead water. But it turned out that if very slowly, carefully and gradually replace protium in water, where some microorganisms live, with deuterium, then you can accustom them to heavy water and they will live and develop well in it, and ordinary water will become harmful for them.

How many water molecules are there in the ocean?

One. And this answer is not really a joke. Of course, everyone can, after looking at the reference book and finding out how much water is in the World Ocean, it is easy to count how many H 2 O molecules it contains. But this answer will not be entirely correct. Water is a special substance. Due to the peculiar structure, individual molecules interact with each other. A special chemical bond arises due to the fact that each of the hydrogen atoms of one molecule pulls towards itself the electrons of the oxygen atoms in neighboring molecules. Due to such a hydrogen bond, each water molecule turns out to be quite tightly bound to four neighboring molecules.

How are water molecules in water built?

Unfortunately, this very important issue has not been sufficiently studied yet. The structure of molecules in liquid water is very complex. When ice melts, its net structure is partially retained in the resulting water. Molecules in melt water are composed of many simple molecules - aggregates that retain the properties of ice. As the temperature rises, some of them disintegrate, and their sizes become smaller.

Mutual attraction leads to the fact that the average size of a complex water molecule in liquid water significantly exceeds the size of one water molecule. Such an extraordinary molecular structure of water determines its extraordinary physical and chemical properties.

What is the density of the water?

A very strange question, isn't it? Remember how the unit of mass was set - one gram. This is the mass of one cubic centimeter of water. This means that there can be no doubt that the density of water should only be as it is. Can you doubt this? Can. Theorists calculated that if water did not retain a loose, ice-like structure in a liquid state and its molecules were packed tightly, then the density of water would be much higher. At 25 ° C, it would not be equal to 1.0, but 1.8 g / cm 3.

At what temperature should the water boil?

This question is also, of course, strange. That's right, at a hundred degrees. Everyone knows this. Moreover, it is the boiling point of water at normal atmospheric pressure that is chosen as one of the reference points of the temperature scale, conventionally designated 100 ° C. However, the question is posed differently: at what temperature should the water boil? After all, the boiling points of various substances are not accidental. They depend on the position of the elements that make up their molecules in the periodic system of Mendeleev.

If we compare with each other chemical compounds of the same composition of various elements belonging to the same group of the periodic table, then it is easy to see that the lower the atomic number of an element, the lower its atomic weight, the lower the boiling point of its compounds. According to its chemical composition, water can be called oxygen hydride. H 2 Te, H 2 Se and H 2 S are chemical analogs of water. If you determine the boiling point of oxygen hydride by its position on the periodic table, it turns out that water should boil at -80 ° C. Consequently, the water boils about one hundred and eighty degrees higher than it should boil. The boiling point of water - this is its most common property - turns out to be extraordinary and amazing.

At what temperature does water freeze?

Isn't this question no less strange than the previous ones? Well, who doesn't know that water freezes at zero degrees? This is the second reference point for the thermometer. This is the most common property of water. But in this case, one can ask: at what temperature should water freeze in accordance with its chemical nature? It turns out that oxygen hydride, based on its position in the periodic table, would have to solidify at a hundred degrees below zero.

Since the melting and boiling points of oxygen hydride are its anomalous properties, it follows that in the conditions of our Earth, its liquid and solid states are also abnormal. Only the gaseous state of water should be normal.

How many gaseous states of water are there?

Only one thing is steam. Is there only one steam? Of course not, there is as much water vapor as there are different waters. Water vapor, differing in isotopic composition, has, although very close, but still different properties: they have different density, at the same temperature they differ slightly in elasticity in the saturated state, they have slightly different critical pressures, different diffusion rate.

Can water remember?

This question sounds, admittedly, very unusual, but it is quite serious and very important. It concerns a large physicochemical problem, which in its most important part has not yet been investigated. This question has only been posed in science, but it has not yet found an answer to it.

The question is whether or not the previous history of water influences its physicochemical properties and whether it is possible, by studying the properties of water, to find out what happened to it earlier, to make the water itself “remember” and tell us about it. Yes, perhaps, surprising as it may seem. The easiest way to understand this is through a simple but very interesting and extraordinary example - from the memory of ice.

Ice is water. When water evaporates, the isotopic composition of water and steam changes. Light water evaporates, albeit to an insignificant degree, but faster than heavy water.

When natural water evaporates, the composition changes in the isotopic content of not only deuterium, but also heavy oxygen. These changes in the vapor isotopic composition are very well studied, and their dependence on temperature is also well studied.

Scientists have recently performed a wonderful experiment. In the Arctic, in the thickness of a huge glacier in northern Greenland, a borehole was drilled and a giant ice core almost one and a half kilometers long was drilled and extracted. Annual layers of growing ice were clearly visible on it. Along the entire length of the core, these layers were subjected to isotopic analysis, and the temperatures of formation of annual ice layers in each section of the core were determined from the relative abundances of heavy isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen - deuterium and 18 O. The date of the formation of the annual layer was determined by direct counting. Thus, the climatic situation on Earth was restored over a millennium. The water managed to remember and record all this in the deep layers of the Greenland glacier.

As a result of isotopic analyzes of ice layers, scientists have plotted climate change on Earth. It turned out that our average temperature is subject to secular fluctuations. It was very cold in the 15th century, at the end of the 17th century and at the beginning of the 19th. The hottest years were 1550 and 1930.

What the water retained in its memory completely coincided with the records in the historical chronicles. The periodicity of climate change discovered from the isotopic composition of ice makes it possible to predict the average temperature in the future on our planet.

This is all perfectly understandable and clear. Although the millennial chronology of weather on Earth, recorded in the thickness of the polar glacier, is very surprising, the isotopic equilibrium has been studied well enough and there are no mysterious problems in this yet.

Then what is the riddle of the "memory" of water?

The fact is that in recent years, science has gradually accumulated many amazing and completely incomprehensible facts. Some of them are firmly established, others require quantitative reliable confirmation, and all of them are still awaiting an explanation.

For example, no one yet knows what happens to water flowing through a strong magnetic field. Theoretical physicists are absolutely sure that nothing can and does not happen to it, confirming their conviction with completely reliable theoretical calculations, from which it follows that after the cessation of the magnetic field, the water should instantly return to its previous state and remain the same ... And experience shows that it changes and becomes different.

From ordinary water in a steam boiler, dissolved salts, being released, are deposited as a dense and hard, like stone, layer on the walls of boiler pipes, and from magnetized water (as it is now called in technology) they fall out in the form of a loose sediment suspended in water. It seems that the difference is small. But it depends on the point of view. According to workers of thermal power plants, this difference is extremely important, since magnetized water ensures the normal and uninterrupted operation of giant power plants: the walls of steam boiler pipes do not overgrow, heat transfer is higher, and electricity generation is greater. At many thermal power plants, magnetic water treatment has long been installed, and neither engineers nor scientists know how and why it works. In addition, it has been observed experimentally that after the magnetic treatment of water, the processes of crystallization, dissolution, adsorption are accelerated in it, wetting changes ... however, in all cases the effects are small and difficult to reproduce. But how in science can one evaluate what is little and what is a lot? Who will undertake to do this? The action of a magnetic field on water (necessarily fast flowing) lasts for small fractions of a second, and the water “remembers” this for tens of hours. Why is unknown. In this matter, practice has far outstripped science. After all, it is not even known what exactly the magnetic treatment acts on - on water or on the impurities it contains. There is no such thing as pure water.

The "memory" of water is not limited to the preservation of the effects of magnetic influences. In science, there exist and are gradually accumulating many facts and observations showing that water seems to “remember” and that it was frozen earlier. The melt water recently produced by the melting of a piece of ice seems to be also different from the water from which this piece of ice was formed. In melt water, seeds germinate faster and better, sprouts develop faster; even it seems that chickens that receive melt water grow and develop faster. In addition to the amazing properties of melt water, established by biologists, purely physical and chemical differences are also known, for example, melt water differs in viscosity, in the value of the dielectric constant. The viscosity of melt water takes on its usual value for water only 3-6 days after melting. Why this is so (if so), too, no one knows. Most researchers call this area of \u200b\u200bphenomena the “structural memory” of water, believing that all these strange manifestations of the influence of the previous history of water on its properties are explained by a change in the fine structure of its molecular state. Perhaps this is so, but ... to name it does not mean to explain. There is still an important problem in science: why and how water "remembers" what happened to it.

Does water know what is happening in space?

This question touches on the area of \u200b\u200bsuch extraordinary, so mysterious, still completely incomprehensible observations that they fully justify the figurative formulation of the question. The experimental facts seem to be firmly established, but an explanation has not yet been found for them.

The startling conundrum to which the question relates was not immediately established. It refers to a subtle and seemingly trifling phenomenon that does not have serious significance. This phenomenon is associated with the most subtle and so far incomprehensible properties of water, which are difficult to quantify - with the rate of chemical reactions in aqueous solutions and mainly with the rate of formation and precipitation of poorly soluble reaction products. This is also one of the countless properties of water.

So, for the same reaction carried out under the same conditions, the time of the appearance of the first traces of the sediment is not constant. Although this fact was known for a long time, chemists did not pay attention to it, being satisfied, as is still often the case, with an explanation of "random causes." But gradually, with the development of the theory of reaction rates and the improvement of research methods, this strange fact began to cause confusion.

Despite the most careful precautions in carrying out the experiment under completely constant conditions, the result is still not reproduced: either the precipitate falls out immediately, or you have to wait a long time for its appearance.

It would seem, is it all the same - the precipitate in the test tube precipitates in one, two or twenty seconds? What does it matter? But in science, as in nature, nothing is meaningless.

Scientists were more and more interested in the strange irreproducibility. Finally, a completely unprecedented experiment was organized and carried out. Hundreds of volunteer research chemists in all parts of the world, according to a single, pre-developed program, simultaneously, at the same moment in world time, repeated the same simple experiment over and over again: they determined the rate of appearance of the first traces of the solid phase sediment formed as a result reactions in aqueous solution. The experiment lasted almost fifteen years, more than three hundred thousand repetitions were carried out.

Gradually, an amazing picture began to emerge, inexplicable and mysterious. It turned out that the properties of water, which determine the course of a chemical reaction in an aqueous medium, depend on time.

Today the reaction proceeds in a completely different way than at the same moment it went yesterday, and tomorrow it will go differently again.

The differences were small, but they existed and required attention, research, and scientific explanation.

The results of statistical processing of the materials of these observations led scientists to a striking conclusion: it turned out that the dependence of the reaction rate on time for different parts of the globe is exactly the same.

This means that there are some mysterious conditions that are changing simultaneously throughout our planet and affecting the properties of water.

Further processing of the materials led scientists to an even more unexpected consequence. It turned out that the events taking place on the Sun are somehow reflected on the water. The nature of the reaction in water follows the rhythm of solar activity - the appearance of spots and flares on the Sun.

But this is not enough. An even more incredible phenomenon was discovered. Water in some inexplicable way responds to what is happening in space. A clear dependence on the change in the relative speed of the Earth in its motion in outer space was established.

The mysterious connection between water and events taking place in the Universe is still unexplained. And what value can the connection between water and space have? No one can yet know how big it is. Our body contains about 75% water; there is no life on our planet without water; in every living organism, in every cell, countless chemical reactions take place. If, using the example of a simple and crude reaction, the influence of events in space is noticed, then it is not even possible to imagine how great the significance of this influence on the global processes of the development of life on Earth can be. Probably, the science of the future, cosmobiology, will be very important and interesting. One of its main sections will be the study of the behavior and properties of water in a living organism.

Are all the properties of water clear to scientists?

Of course not! Water is a mysterious substance. Until now, scientists cannot yet understand and explain many of its properties.

Can there be any doubt that all such riddles will be successfully solved by science? But many new, even more amazing, mysterious properties of water - the most extraordinary substance in the world - will be discovered.

http://wsyachina.narod.ru/physics/aqua_1.html

Most people can 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 an ordinary 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 resistance to flow. Liquids, on the other hand, have a disorganized molecular structure that allows them to flow, spread, change shape and take the shape of the vessel in which they are located. Amorphous solids fall 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, humans have been making glass from silicon dioxide. When glassmakers cool silica from a 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 are still disordered. And then the glass becomes amorphous and solid at the same time. This transition allowed artisans to create beautiful and surreal glass structures.

What is the functional difference between amorphous solids and normal solid state? In everyday life, it is not particularly noticeable. Glass seems completely solid until you study it at the molecular level. And the myth that glass flows down over time is not worth a dime. Most often, this myth is supported by arguments that the old glass in churches seems to be 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 scientifically interesting for studying phase transitions and molecular structure.

Supercritical fluids (fluids)

Most phase transitions occur at a specific temperature and pressure. It is common knowledge that an increase in temperature ultimately converts a liquid to a gas. However, when pressure increases with temperature, the fluid leaps 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 like a gas, but they can also act as a solvent like 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 as often as you do with glass. Supercritical carbon dioxide is loved by brewers for its ability to act as a solvent when interacting with hops, and coffee companies use it to make the best decaffeinated coffee. Supercritical fluids have also been used for more efficient hydrolysis and to keep power plants operating at higher temperatures. In general, you probably use supercritical fluid byproducts 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 substance will be maintained even if the temperature of the substance drops to absolute zero. There are two main types of degenerate matter: electron-degenerate and neutron-degenerate matter.

Electron-degenerate matter exists mainly in white dwarfs. It forms in the core of a star when the mass of matter around the core tries to squeeze the electrons of the core to a lower energy state. However, according to Pauli's principle, two identical particles cannot be in the same energy state. Thus, the particles "repel" the material 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 a neutron star, it no longer has electron-degenerate matter, it consists of neutron-degenerate matter. Because a neutron star is heavy, electrons merge with protons in its core to form neutrons. Free neutrons (neutrons are not bound in an 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 can also exist, including strange matter that can exist in a rare star form - quark stars. Quark stars are the stage between a neutron star and a black hole, where the quarks in the core are decoupled and form a soup of free quarks. We have not yet observed this type of stars, but physicists admit their existence.

Superfluidity

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 superfluids and some superfluids are BECs, but not all are identical.

Liquid helium is known for its superfluidity. When the helium is cooled down to the "lambda point" of -270 degrees Celsius, some of the liquid becomes superfluid. If you cool most of the substances to a certain point, the attraction between the atoms surpasses the thermal vibrations in the substance, allowing them to form a solid structure. But helium atoms interact 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 have no 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 superfluids cannot be thermally different. If you add heat to a superfluid substance, it will conduct it so quickly that heat waves are formed that are not characteristic of ordinary liquids.

Bose - Einstein condensate

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 electron-degenerate matter to exist. A boson, however, has a total 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 Satiendra Nath Bose as a basis to propose a new form of matter. Einstein's original theory was that if you cool certain elementary gases to fractions 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 technologies needed to cool elements to such temperatures appeared. In 1995, scientists Eric Cornell and Carl Wiemann were able to combine 2,000 atoms into a Bose-Einstein condensate that was large enough to be seen through a microscope.

Bose-Einstein condensates are closely related to superfluids, but they also have their own set of unique properties. It's also funny that BEC can slow down the normal speed of light. In 1998, Harvard scientist Lena 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 light-based communication and quantum computing.

Jan-Teller metals

Jan-Teller metals are the newest child in the world of states of matter, as scientists were able to successfully create them for the first time only 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 (known by the common people as fullerenes), which led to the fact that fullerenes take 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 compressing something, but also by adding new atoms or molecules to a pre-existing structure, changing its basic properties.

When Prassides' research team 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 insulator and superconductor was never considered until these experiments began.

The interesting thing about the Jan-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 life.

Photonic matter

For many decades, it was believed that photons are massless particles that do not interact with each other. Nonetheless, over the past few years, MIT and Harvard scientists have discovered new ways to "give" mass to light - and even create "" ones that bounce off each other and bond together. Some felt that this was the first step towards creating 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 strikes a gas, it is reflected and interacts with rubidium molecules, losing energy and slowing down. After all, the photon leaves the cloud very slowly.

Strange things start to happen when you shoot 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 degree. The excited atom is in the path of the photon. For an atom nearby to be excited by a second photon, the first photon must pass through the gas. Photons usually do not interact with each other, but when they meet with the Rydberg blockade, they push each other through the gas, exchanging energy and interacting with each other. From the outside, it seems that photons have mass and they act as a single molecule, although they are actually massless. When photons come out of the gas, they appear to be combined, like a molecule of light.

The practical application of photonic matter is still questionable, but it will certainly be found. Perhaps even with lightsabers.

Disordered superhomogeneity

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 superhomogeneity. While this phrase sounds like an oxymoron, at its core it suggests a new type of substance that appears disordered upon closer inspection, but super homogeneous and structured from afar. Such a substance should have the properties of a crystal and a liquid. At first glance, this already exists in plasmas and liquid hydrogen, but recently scientists have discovered 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 happens because the cones in the chicken's eye have exclusion zones around them, and they do not allow two cones of the same type to be adjacent. Due to the exclusion zone and the shape of the cones, they cannot form ordered crystalline structures (as in solids), but when all the cones are viewed as one unit, 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 closely and as solid when viewed from afar. This differs from the amorphous solids we talked about above, since this super-homogeneous material will act like a liquid, but an amorphous solid will not.

Scientists are still investigating this new state of matter, because, among other things, it may be more common than originally thought. Scientists at Princeton University are now trying to adapt such super-homogeneous materials to create self-organizing structures and light detectors that respond to light at a specific wavelength.

String nets

What state of matter is the cosmic vacuum? Most people don't think about it, but in the past decade, MIT's Xiao Gang-Wen and Harvard's Michael Levin have proposed a new state of matter that could lead us to the discovery of fundamental particles after the electron.

The path to developing a string-network fluid model began in the mid-90s, when a group of scientists proposed the so-called quasiparticles, which seemed to appear in an experiment when electrons passed between two semiconductors. A commotion arose as the quasiparticles acted as if they had a fractional charge, which seemed impossible for the physics of that 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 earned them the Nobel Prize, but later it turned out that an error in the experiment crept into the results of their work. Quasiparticles have been safely forgotten.

But not all. Wen and Levin took the idea of \u200b\u200bquasiparticles as a basis and proposed a new state of matter, the string-net state. The main property of this state is quantum entanglement. As with disordered superhomogeneity, if you look closely at the string-web stuff, it looks like a disordered collection of electrons. But if you look at it as a solid structure, you will see a high degree of ordering due to the quantum-entangled properties of electrons. Wen and Levin then expanded their work to encompass other particles and entanglement properties.

After working on computer models for the new state of matter, Wen and Levin discovered that the ends of string networks could produce a variety of subatomic particles, including the legendary "quasiparticles." An even bigger surprise was the fact that when the string-net matter vibrates, it does so in accordance with Maxwell's equations responsible for light. Wen and Levin theorized that space is filled with string networks of entangled subatomic particles and that the ends of these string networks are the subatomic particles we observe. They also suggested that the string-net fluid could provide the existence of light. If the cosmic vacuum is filled with string-net fluid, this could allow us to combine light and matter.

All of this may seem very far-fetched, but in 1972 (decades before the string-network proposals) geologists discovered a strange material in Chile - herbertsmithite. In this mineral, 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 within a string-network model, and scientists worked with artificial herbertsmithite to accurately confirm the model.

Quark-gluon plasma

In the last state of matter on this list, consider the state that started it all: quark-gluon plasma. In the early Universe, the state of matter was significantly different from the classical one. First, a little background.

Quarks are elementary particles that we find inside hadrons (such as 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 exchange particles of strong nuclear interaction.

We do not see free quarks in nature, but immediately after the Big Bang, free quarks and gluons existed for a millisecond. 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 cooled down enough to form heavy particles like hadrons, and quarks began 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 the modern universe, scientists have 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 the quarks were 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 looked 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 was formed as we know it.

Based on materials from listverse.com