4 States of Matter Properties – Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma

There are four states of matter common in everyday life — gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas. However, there is also a fifth state of matter — Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), which scientists first created in the lab 25 years ago.

three

There are four natural states of matter: Solids, liquids, gases and plasma. The fifth state is the man-made Bose-Einstein condensates.

Excitonium is a condensate—it exhibits macroscopic quantum phenomena, like a superconductor, or superfluid, or insulating electronic crystal. It’s made up of excitons, particles that are formed in a very strange quantum mechanical pairing, namely that of an escaped electron and the hole it left behind.

The sun is a bolus of gas and fire measuring around 27 million degrees Fahrenheit at its core and 10,000 degrees at its surface. Meanwhile, the cosmic background temperature—the temperature of space once you get far enough away to escape Earth’s balmy atmosphere—hovers at -455 F.

Astronauts need space suits to stay alive. You could only last 15 seconds without a spacesuit — you’d die of asphyxiation or you’ll freeze. If there’s any air left in your lungs, they will rupture. See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Hot things move quickly, cold things very slowly. If atoms come to a complete stop, they are at absolute zero. Space is just above that, at an average temperature of 2.7 Kelvin (about minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit).

Today, astronauts at the International Space Station go to the bathroom into a little plate-sized toilet hole, and a fan vacuum sucks their excrement away and a separate funnel equipped with a fan suction their pee away.

As a result NASA’s official policy forbids pregnancy in space. Female astronauts are tested regularly in the 10 days prior to launch. And sex in space is very much frowned upon. So far the have been no confirmed instances of coitus, though lots of speculation.

However, of the roughly 550 people who have so far ventured into space, only three have actually died there. Bringing the universe to your door.