Physics teaches that matter has four states, solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Recently, a large team of specialists began to investigate a little more about it and discovered that it is possible that there are several more states.
A few months ago we demonstrated the existence of time crystals, which had begun as a simple theory in 2012 and today is a fact. On this occasion, two scientific teams demonstrated that there is another state of matter that we had never taken into account.
Extremes of temperature and pressure, a new state
The temperature and pressure conditions may be varied to modify the state of matter. In this case, at its ends, the matter would seem to develop very particular properties, according to experts from ETH Zurich and MIT.
The new state of matter is a supersolid which is characterized by having a regular structure, such as solids, but it has no viscosity, such as superfluids.
Having a total absence of viscosity, in a closed circuit would never have friction and would flow eternally, it would never reach the state at rest. That is to say that if the coffee were a supersolid and it stirs, it would continue to stir even if no force is exerted.
It is the first material that combines superfluidity and solidity, which makes it the most contradictory state.
Obtaining the super-solid
In 1969, British physicist David Thouless suggested that superfluids could become supersolids and have since tried so many times. Until now they always used helium atoms to achieve this structure, but without obtaining good results.
In contrast, in both studies they used as base a Bose-Einstein condensate, obtained by cooling rubidium gas atoms at temperatures near absolute zero in a vacuum chamber. This condensate behaves like a superfluid.
The condensate was then placed in a special device, with two lasers (on one machine) and a laser and mirrors (on the other machine). Both of these facilities caused condensed atoms to be organized in a regular structure, such as crystal structures.
Lead author Jun-Ru Li explained that the recipe for creating the super-solid is very simple, the most complex part was to align the lasers (or lasers and mirrors) to create the regular structure.
For now, there is no application for this new state of matter, especially since it is a material that exists only at very low temperatures and under ultra-vacuum conditions. However, in the scientific community it is believed that it could help to understand superconductivity and superfluids and eventually build materials capable of conducting electricity without resistance.