Scientists have created a new kind of matter: It comes in waves and bridges the gap between the everyday world of humans and the micro-domain of quantum physics.

For the whole story,
click here (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/20mar_newmatter.htm)

Ketterle, Cornell and Wieman received the 2001 Nobel prize in physics for achieving Bose-Einstein condensation.

Here's the latest on states of matter, and there is a new Chandra story I'm chasing up to about a strange new state of matter in space too.

There are now eight states (phases) of matter. Plasma, Gas, Liquid, Solid, Bose Einstein Condensate, BEC-Mott insulator, Degenerate Fermi gas, Degenerate Fermi sea.

In 1995 physicists finally made a new state of matter that had been predicted decades before by Bose and Einstein: the ‘Bose-Einstein condensate’ or BEC.


BEC-Mott insulator
<A HREF="http://www.nature.com/nsu/020101/020101-1.html" target=new><FONT COLOR=ff0098 size=+1> BEC-Mott insulator
</FONT></A>

Degenerate Fermi gas.

<A HREF="http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/580-1.html" target=new><FONT COLOR=fg0098 size=+1> All-Optical Trapping of a Degenerate Fermi Gas </FONT></A>

Degenerate Fermi sea.

<A HREF="http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/581-1.html" target=new><FONT COLOR=Lime size=+1> A molecular Bose-Einstein condensate </FONT></A>