London: Scientists in Britain claimed to have created a new state of matter after they developed a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation, a discovery that will facilitate greater understanding about the creation of 'miniature stars'.
According to the research, detailed in the journal Nature Physics, its an idea straight out of science fiction, featured in the movie Star Trek IV.
"What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics was quoted as saying by Live Science.
He said the transparent aluminum "is just the start".
"The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth," Wark underlined.
He also said the remarkable thing about the experiment is that "we have turned ordinary aluminum into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser".
The normal states of matter are solid, liquid and gas, and a fourth state, called plasma, is a superheated gas considered more exotic. Other experiments have created strange states of matter for brief periods. This one, too, existed only briefly, the report said.