Related papers: States of matter
The terminology granular matter refers to systems with a large number of hard objects (grains) of mesoscopic size ranging from millimeters to meters. Geological examples include desert sand and the rocks of a landslide. But the scope of…
This work presents a comparative study of the best models available to describe granular fluids in order to investigate the extent to which it makes sense to speak about a liquid-gas transition in a system of particles that present no…
I examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities. I explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other…
Of the three basic states of matter, liquid is perhaps the most complex. While its flow properties are described by fluid mechanics, its thermodynamic properties are often neglected, and for many years it was widely believed that a general…
This paper is the second in series of the Indian physics of the Nyaya-Vaisheshika school. It is significant that the school defines matter not in terms of something gross that is anchored to the commonsensical notion of an object, but…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
Liquids flow, making them remarkably distinct from solids and close to gases. At the same time, interactions in liquids are strong as in solids. The combination of these two properties is believed to be the ultimate obstacle to constructing…
Glass is everywhere. We use and are surrounded by glass objects which make tangible the reality of glass as a distinct state of matter. Yet, glass as we know it is usually obtained by cooling a liquid sufficiently rapidly below its melting…
There are at least three fundamental states of matter, depending upon temperature and pressure: gas, liquid, and solid (crystal). These states are separated by first-order phase transitions between them. In both gas and liquid phases the…
We address the question of whether solids may be distinguished from fluids by their response to shear stress
Strongly interacting, dynamically disordered and with no small parameter, liquids took a theoretical status between gases and solids. We review different approaches to liquids and propose that liquids do not need classifying in terms of…
Spin liquids are quantum phases of matter that exhibit a variety of novel features associated with their topological character. These include various forms of fractionalization - elementary excitations that behave as fractions of an…
The most successful "Standard Model" allows one to define the so-called "Elementary Particles". Now from another point of view, philosophical, how can we think of them? Which kind of a status can be attributed to Elementary Particles and…
Granular materials are ubiquitous in our daily lives. While they have been a subject of intensive engineering research for centuries, in the last decade granular matter attracted significant attention of physicists. Yet despite a major…
Granular fluids consist of collections of activated mesoscopic or macroscopic particles (e.g., powders or grains) whose flows often appear similar to those of normal fluids. To explore the qualitative and quantitative description of these…
Dark matter, believed to be present in many galaxies, is interpreted as a hydrodynamical system in interaction with the gravitational field and nothing else. An equation of state determines the mass distribution and the associated…
In this perspective article, we discuss bacterial populations as a model system of active matter. It allows for the exploration and characterization of various phases of active matter and brings rich implications for both physics and…
To solve the ancient problem of fluids, i.e., of states in which there is no difference between gas and liquid (the so-called supercritical states), it is necessary to abandon several "rules of the game", which are customary to physicists…
Granular media such as sand and sugar are ubiquitous in nature and industry but are less well understood than fluids or solids. We consider the behavior of rapid granular flows where the transfer of momenta by collisions dominates. The…
We describe the very nature of the elementary particles, which our (visible) Universe consists of. We point out that they are not point-like, and we depict their ways of interacting. We also address puzzles that occur even in the absence of…