Speaking Sub-atomically
In the early definitions of matter, everything made of molecules was included. It was later expanded to incorporate everything that contains subatomic particles. Currently, ordinary matter is considered to be anything made up of quarks, neutrinos and electrons – but certain materials aren’t made of quarks, although they have mass. These concepts are beyond the usual content taught during our Physics tuition classes, but let’s discuss them briefly here.
There is baryonic matter, which is made up of 3 quarks; there is degenerate matter, where pressure is depended on amount of fermions instead of temperature; and there is strange matter, which is generally a quark containing strange quarks along with the typical up and down quark.
Anti-matter
Antimatter is made up of particles which are referred to as antiparticles. Antimatter isn’t the opposite of matter, but it’s the anti to conventional matter. If antimatter and matter meet, they instantly destroy each other, turning into other particles of an equal combined energy.
Dark Matter
This is the kind of matter that can’t be seen or measured. It’s known due to the fact that it has an effect on the things surrounding it through gravitational pull, which can be measured. But then again the dark matter doesn’t emit anything which is directly observable, so its presence can only be inferred by measuring all that’s around it.
Since it can’t be directly studied, there is no idea on what it’s made of, but it’s postulated that the dark matter is not created from the normal things available on Earth. The best information about dark matter is that it’s made up of particles that form only in extremely high energy, that is, the Big Bang, and even now, exist from this single occasion. According to thermodynamics, matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
Exotic Matter
According to particle physicists, there is this type of matter referred to as exotic matter. It’s basically a general term for things that do not fit into the any of the categories discussed above. In other words, it’s the things that we are only aware of due to the fact that in theoretical / mathematical terms, they should exist. For instance, things that are repelled by gravity simply because they possess negative mass.
