When trying to decide whether a substance is a new state of matter, scientists look at the structure of the substance as well as its properties. In 2003, Salvatore Torquato and Frank H. Stillinger of Princeton University proposed a new state of matter known as disordered hyperuniformity. While that might seem like an oxymoron, the idea was that the new type of matter would seem disordered when viewed up close but hyperuniform and structured over a long range. Such matter would have the properties of both a crystal and a liquid. At first, this seemed to only occur in simple plasmas and our liquid hydrogen, but recently researchers have found a natural example in the unlikeliest of places: a chicken’s eye.
Chickens have five cones in their eyes. Four detect color and one detects light levels. However, unlike the human eye or the hexagonal eyes of insects, these cones seem to be dispersed at random with no real order. This occurs because the cones in a chicken’s eye have a exclusion zone around them that does not allow two cones of the same type to sit next to each other. Because of the exclusion zone and the shape of the cones, they are unable to form an ordered crystalline structure (like those we find in solids) but when all the cones are viewed as a whole, it turns out that they actually have a highly ordered pattern, as can be seen in these pictures from Princeton. Thus, we can describe the cones in a chicken’s eye as being a liquid when viewed up close and a solid when viewed from far away. This is different than the amorphous solids mentioned above in that a hyperuniform material will act like a liquid, while an amorphous solid will not.
Scientists are still researching this new state of matter, which may actually be more common than was originally thought. Right now, Princeton researchers are looking into using hyperuniform materials to create self-arranging structures and light detectors geared toward very specific wavelengths. --
http://listverse.com/Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=80702.0
Topic: Disordered Hyperuniformity (Read 663 times)