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At school I was taught that the matter has three phases: solid, liquid and gas. That was given as a truth, and it remained as such for a very long time. All the phases could be easily understood. The little physicist in me was satisfied. Everything was explained logically and for instance water, the most familiar and friendly of all elements, could be seen in all its states, and even transitions from one state to another can be observed visually. Everything made sense. How much I miss those days.
The first crack in my illusion of physical perfectness was caused by bubble gum. It was suddenly brought to my attention that there are materials that are neither solid nor liquid, but in between. They do not have a melting point, but the degree of "liquidness" does depend on the temperature. "Amorphous solids", someone explained to me. I was not satisfied with the explanation, I felt like I had been betrayed. But it did not end here, it was only getting worse.
Plasma was introduced. If you heat matter enough, electrons will have so much energy that they escape the orbit of the atoms, and the matter will become a mess of ionic nucleons and electrons. The mess is called plasma. But if you heat it even more, the nucleons will no longer stay together but the quarks will instead lose their connection. The quark plasma can not be created in your fireplace, not even in nuclear plants or bombs, but that was the temperature a couple of nanoseconds after the Big Bang.
From hot to cold.
Satyendra Nath Bose presented a theory that in very cold conditions matter would start behaving very differently from normal. Bose-Einstein concentrate is again a new phase of matter.
A quick look to
reference material reveals the horrible truth: if you count
everything, there are nearly 20 different states of matter. It is completely up to you what to include in the list. It really depends on the matter we are speaking about, and who is listing. Chaotic.
I am now relying on quantum physicists to convince me that in fact there are no phases of matter at all, there is only energy. The so called "phases" are just an illusion that is caused by complex emergent properties of how different kinds of quantum fields interact with each other. And really what determines different melting points for different materials is - at the end - the properties of the world: Planck time and distance, cosmological constant, number of dimensions. Those determine all phases of matter, and all melting and vaporisation points. Mathematic simplicity.
That is what I would like to hear, it would bring back peace.
