2001: A Space Geek

I first asked this question more than a year ago: How many states of matter are there?

The answer, class, is six. Yes, six. Solids, liquids, and gases, of course. Then there is plasma, a highly energetic form, and two that exist only at extremely low energies (i.e., at very low temperatures) called, respectively, a Bose-Einstein condensate (made of a class of subatomic particles known as bosons) and a fermionic condensate (made of fermions).

Why am I bringing this up again? This is why:

Amsterdam, Netherlands (AP, August 20) - The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.

The handwritten manuscript titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas" was dated December 1924. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in January 1925. ...

The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 460 degrees below zero - particles in a gas can reach a state of such low energy that they clump together in one larger "mono-atom."

The idea was developed in collaboration with Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose[, for who bosons were named,] and the then-theoretical state of matter was dubbed a Bose-Einstein condensation.

The existence of a Bose-Einstein condensate was demonstrated in 1995.

So what we have here is a manuscript of Einstein predicting the existence of a previously-unknown state of matter, one that existed under conditions so extreme and with properties so strange that its existence was beyond our ability to prove for 70 years. And I just think that finding that manuscript is - considering the subject, you'll pardon the expression - really cool.