Unexpected data from the Large Hadron Collider suggest a new type of matter

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/lead-proton-collisions-at-large-hadron-collider-yield-surprising-results-1127.html

by cclark20 • 14 years ago

98 18 14 years ago

web.mit.edu

gliese1337• 14 years ago

Here's the pre-print: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1210.5482

gulbrandr• 14 years ago

Please post the URL of the original article: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/lead-proton-collisions-at...

stephengillie4• 14 years ago

So this color-glass condensate is a very-high-energy type of matter. It goes on the list with:

  Solid
  Liquid
  Gas
  Plasma
  Glass
  Crystal
  Superfluid
  Supersolid
  Superglass
  Dark

guscost• 14 years ago

Dark matter is still a hypothesis.

gwillen• 14 years ago

At some point it becomes silly to keep adding 'phases of matter'. And if you want to be exhaustive, don't forget the other oddball types: the high-density states like neutronium, the high-energy states like quark-gluon plasma, etc.

stephengillie4• 14 years ago

You've got a good point, and there's lots of exotic types and in-betweens on Wikipedia which I didn't list. My list was to point out that we've named more than the 3 classical states of matter.

Nursie• 14 years ago

Coincidentally that's also next year's Pokemon game title list

chimeracoder• 14 years ago

Since when is glass (I assume we mean soda-lime glass) a separate phase of matter?

My impression was that it was a solid, and that the myth that it's a highly viscous liquid was based off of incorrect analysis of stained glass windows, etc. that were more likely explained by imperfections in the production process.

ajross• 14 years ago

"Phases" are poorly defined. They exist wherever there's a statistical mechanics reason to define them, and they make sense only within the limits of the approximations on which they are based. Glass is "solid" to a mechanical engineer (in most regimes), but it's not a crystal and doesn't behave like one to a solid state physicist. Likewise "plasma" is a great tool to describe a fluorescent light bulb or lightning bolt, but not so much a white dwarf. Even stuff you think you understand, like "liquid and gas are clearly different" turns out to be wrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid).

stephengillie4• 14 years ago

My impression was also incorrect. Wiki says it's an "amorphous solid" aka one that doesn't form into crystals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass

There's also Amorphous Ice, which is arranged in a "glass-like" form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_ice

juiceandjuice2• 14 years ago

Dark matter doesn't belong on that list.

stephengillie4• 14 years ago

Why not? Because the energy of which it's composed doesn't interact with photons?

danking00• 14 years ago

Even though the MIT News Office subtitled the article with the phrase "new type of matter," could we please change the HN title to "new phase of matter"?

Perhaps this is an Americanism, but a "new type of matter" suggests to me that we've found a new family of fundamental particles besides the quarks, the leptons, and the gauge bosons.

What the article talks about is quite clearly a phase of matter called "color-glass condensate".

Unexpected data from the Large Hadron Collider suggest a new type of matter

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