Scientists Have Discovered A Fourth State Of Water

Scientists Have Discovered

A Fourth State Of Water


A new state of matter was discovered when researchers put water molecules
under extreme confinement.

Scientists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have squeezed water molecules
between hexagonal beryl crystals and discovered that the water acts in a completely new way.

The water molecules start moving according to the laws of quantum mechanics,
exhibiting a phenomenon called quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling allows particles to move through energy barriers.

If you have a quantum particle in a box, it might be able to pass through the wall of the box even if it doesn’t have the energy to jump out of the box. In this specific case, the water molecules in the beryl crystal are no longer in a specific position, but instead are spread out.

“This discovery represents a new fundamental understanding of the behavior of water
and the way water utilizes energy,” Lawrence Anovitz, co-author of the study,
said in a statement.

“It’s also interesting to think that those water molecules in your aquamarine or emerald ring
– blue and green varieties of beryl
– are undergoing the same quantum tunneling we’ve seen in our experiments.”




http://www.iflscience.com/physics/new-quantum-state-water-discovered/