Team projects two out of three glaciers could be lost by 2100

Assistant Professor David Rounce of Civil and Environmental Engineering led an international effort to produce new projections of glacier mass loss through the century under different emissions scenarios. The projections ...

Binary stars boost cosmic carbon footprint

The cosmic origin of carbon, a fundamental building block of life, is still uncertain. Massive stars play an important role in the synthesis of all heavy elements, from carbon and oxygen to iron and so on. But even though ...

Volcanic surge narrowed seas during ancient global warming event

Curtin University research has found that a surge in volcanic activity 56 million years ago not only triggered a major global warming event turning polar regions into a lush tropical landscape, but also altered the shape ...

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Gas

Gas is one of the three classical states of matter (the others being liquid and solid). Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point (see phase change), boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons are so energized that they leave their parent atoms from within the gas. A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas or atomic gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or compound molecules made from a variety of atoms (e.g. carbon dioxide). A gas mixture would contain a variety of pure gases much like the air. What distinguishes a gas from liquids and solids is the vast separation of the individual gas particles. This separation usually makes a colorless gas invisible to the human observer. The interaction of gas particles in the presence of electric and gravitational fields are considered negligible as indicated by the constant velocity vectors in the image.

The gaseous state of matter is found between the liquid and plasma states, the latter of which provides the upper temperature boundary for gases. Bounding the lower end of the temperature scale lie degenerative quantum gases which are gaining increased attention these days. High-density atomic gases super cooled to incredibly low temperatures are classified by their statistical behavior as either a Bose gas or a Fermi gas. For a comprehensive listing of these exotic states of matter see list of states of matter.

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