Scientists Discover a New Phase of Matter

Then let us help Stanford with another variation of Folding@Home program!

So which is it...did they actually 'Discover it' or did they simply find something that needs to be proven, first?

Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to etch this information in stone. While it is still in the very early discovery phases and not completely validated, it could potentially be true. There is a huge difference to an initial discovery and writing it off as a new scientific law.

F@H with electrons.

Hey, this is a great idea for the superconductor industry...when it arrives to take on semiconductors.

Posting something on the internet is not "etching it in stone".

At first, I was like "I don't give a crap", but then I reread the title and went whoa. Then I read the actual article and almost immediately stopped caring...

A phase of matter isn't "scientific law". Matter phases are emergent phenomena as a direct result of statistical mechanical properties of materials.

I disagree:

Reporting incorrect or invalidated information as truth is more permanent than you think. Take someone who has been wrongly accused of a felony. They often never recover once this has been removed...their name is permanently tarnished for a crime the did not commit.

The same goes for information- it begins as rumor and can be spread verbally or otherwise used and manipulated to work for or against a specific viewpoint.

And you think that once you delete an email from your inbox or remove a photo from a social site, it 'goes away forever'? Think again. Electronic information has an incredibly deep residual hold once it has been saved and submitted.

"To reach superconductivity, superconductors are often cooled to absolute zero"

What?

Not all the way to absolute zero, but within a few k of it. A more common and real world use of superconductors is the primary coils in MRIs which are also cooled by liquid helium

So this "state" of matter is kinda like plasma...?
Plasma isn't another state, it's just a hotter gas.
This new "state" doesn't sound like another state... just a colder solid.

Headline is way too sensational for the actual story. I was expecting to learn about a new alternative to solid, liquid, gas, etc.

Yeah...absolute zero is impossible, what with the laws of thermodynamics standing in the way and all. Within a few fractions of a degree off absolute zero, sure.

Plasma is formed by heating a gas and applying an electrical charge, but is is a different state of matter, a hotter gas behaves differently than a plasma.

Yup. Cooled right down to absolute zero. Better go a few degrees below it just to be safe...

If you had to pick one of the three classical states, hot gas would about do it. Pluto is also "not a planet".

That is incorrect, plasma, is in fact another state. It doesn't act like a gas at all, for example, it does not follow the Gas Law, although similar to a gas in the fact that it doesn't have a definite volume, the huge difference is plasma's are ionized and their electrons are not bound as they are in gas state, because, the have more energy to break away from the nucleus of the atom. A state of matter is essentially defined by the properties associated with that state. A gas is a gas because, it follows the gas law, liquads, plasma, and solid also have their on laws which define their volume, density, etc ... this new state, clearly, doesn't follow the laws of aolid or may so closely, but likek they said, they need to find out more about it's properties.

then stop visiting the site, and keep your comments to yourself.....problem fixed

"superconductors are often cooled to absolute zero"

... not quite

He's climbing in your window snatching up your kids, hide your kids, hide you are wife, you are so dumb, really really dumb ... but here for you non-educated folks, super-conductivity allows for fast processing speeds, duh ... hence if you cooled the copper ... i.e. copper transistors and they become super conductive imagine what kind of processing speed you could achieve. So, see, if you think, it's not so dumb after all ... it was actually quite clever.

@acadia11

copper makes for a sux transistor not to mention semi-conductor

im still confused, are we talking about string-net liquids here (a state of matter that had been theorized for a while now, and contrary to the name is actually a solid that posses some qualities of liquids) or another state of matter altogether, it would be strange if there was another state of matter between solid, string-net liquids and liquids, seeing as string-nets are exotic enough already is there really enough room for another state of matter

absolute zero has never been reached by man or naturally in the known universe, however, scientist have come extremely close to 0K.

cooled to absolute zero, despite using an infinite amount of energy in the process... oo yeahhh

not really....it's a nice game but very repetitive

And how is it faster??? The electricity is transferred from A to B at the speed of light anyway, so how does that speed it up? I guess there wouldn't be any power loss in the transistor as it would have no resistance, but that won't help much as you will still have the power loss elsewhere.

...That doesn't seem like a very coherent response to my comment, but whatever.

@PreferLinux

actually not that i think his right, cause you cant easily make semi-conductor out of copper, but as the temp drops the internal resistance drops due to electrons vibrating alot less, current speed is limited by the thermal envelope, chips just cant go faster without disintegrating under the thermal load but if they were super conducting thats would all but disappear and you would no longer be limited by the thermal envelope only the speed of the electron (close to the speed of light as you quoted), for that to work though you need a super conducting semi-conductor which is almost a contradiction......

Exciting news, though a state of matter that won't be seeable outside of the lab, I suppose.

This is all getting a little off-topic, but I'm not at all sure you can make transistors out of copper, even if it is really cold, superconductor != semiconductor. The superconducting 'transistor' is the Josephson Junction.

From my understanding of a super conductor . an SC would transfer electricity with no resistance no heat and no power loss. Ac to DC conversion does waste electricity but a super conductor could help with that as well assuming we don't find a better way of the conversion.

I was also only aware of 4 states of matter.. Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.

I hates dem crying sis!!

@EnFoRceR22

there are a further two theorized states of matter, the string-net liquid and Bose Einsteins condensate. Herbertsmithite was recently discovered to have string-net liquid like properties and while observations of boson have shown that they behave in a Bose-Einstein condensate nature

there are also sub domains of state two if given the right conditions gases can become super critical gas, there are also super solids and super liquids too