50, 100 & 150 Years

1976 "Recently scientists have discovered that the carriers of electric charge inside a crystal can exist in a state that has many of the properties associated with water.

- JEANNA BRYNER

AN ELECTRON-HOLE LIQUID

For instance, it can exist as a vapor, and when the relative humidity becomes high enough, the particles condense. Unlike water, the new liquid exists only inside a solid semiconductor, and it cannot be extracted from that environment. Instead of the atoms or molecules of an ordinary liquid, it consists of electrons and 'holes,' or the positively charged voids formed by the absence of an electron. The electrons and holes continually annihilate each other and, in the process, give off infrared radiation. As a result, the liquid is inherently unstable; it disappears in a fraction of a second without a continual supply of electrons and holes.

"Finally, the new liquid is essentially a quantummechanical fluid. Effects that are negligible in conventional fluids have a major influence on the electron-hole liquid. For these reasons the new liquid offers a unique testing ground for some of the fundamental principles of physics."

HOW TO OBSERVE SUNSPOTS 1926