Friday, December 15, 2017

THE FOURTH PHASE OF WATER BEYOND SOLID, LIQUID, AND VAPOR : GERALD H. POLLACK

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THE FOURTH PHASE OF WATER
BEYOND SOLID, LIQUID, AND VAPOR
by GERALD H. POLLACK
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"to Gilbert Ling
who taught me that water in the cell
is nothing like water in a glass;
whose courage has been a
continuing inspiration."

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Our specific goal is to understand water. Water now seems complicated. The understanding of everyday phenomena often requires complex twists and non-intuitive turns — and still we fail to reach satisfying understandings. A possible cause of this unsatisfying complexity is the present foundational underpinning: an ad hoc collection of long-standing principles drawn from diverse fields. Perhaps a more suitable foundation — built directly from studying water — might yield simpler understandings. That’s the direction we’re headed.

  To read this book, you needn’t be a scientist; the 
book is designed for anyone with even the most 
primitive knowledge of science. If you understand 
that positive attracts negative and have heard of 
the periodic table, then you should be able to get 
the message. On the other hand, those who might 
thumb their noses at anything that seriously 
questions current dogma will certainly find the 
approach distasteful, for threads of challenge 
weave through the book’s very fabric. This book 
is unconventional —a saga filled with steamy 
scenes and unexpected twists, all of which 
resolve into something I hope you will find 
satisfying, and perhaps even fun to read.

  I have restricted formal references to those 
instances in which citations seemed absolutely 
necessary. Where the point is generally known or 
easily accessible, I’ve omitted them. The 
overarching goal was to streamline the text for 
readability.

  Finally, let me admit to having no delusion that 
all of the ideas offered here will necessarily turn 
out to be ground truth. Some are speculative. I 
have certainly aimed at producing science fact, 
not science fiction. However, as you know, even 
a single ugly fact can demolish the most beautiful 
of theories. The material in this book represents 
my best and most earnest attempt to assemble the 
available evidence into a cohesive interpretational 
framework. The framework is unconventional, 
and I already know that some scientists do not 
agree with all aspects. Nevertheless, it is a 
sincere attempt to create understanding where 
little exists.

  So, as we plunge into these murky waters, let us 
see if we can achieve some needed clarity. 

THE FOURTH PHASE OF WATER
BEYOND SOLID, LIQUID, AND VAPOR
by GERALD H. POLLACK
 (GHP)
Seattle, September 2012


Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has 
seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
 -- Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel laureate (1893-1986)


A BESTIARY

A reader's guide to the species that lurk within 
the mysterious aqueous Domain. 

Water Molecule: The familiar water molecule,
composed of two hydrogen atoms and one 
oxygen atom.

Bulk Water : The standard collection of water
molecules, whose arrangement is still debated.


Ever wonder…
What mysteries lurk in the depths of a glass of 
water? What makes the wispy clouds of vapor 
rising from your cup of hot coffee? Or the puffy 
white clouds hovering in the sky? Why do the 
bubbles in your pop get bigger the longer you 
wait? What keeps Jell-O’s water from oozing 
out? Why does your tongue stick to something 
frozen? And why don’t your joints squeak?

Questions such as those have remained
unanswered not only because they have seemed 
complex, but also because they require that 
scientists pursue a politically risky domain of 
science: water research.

Scientists trying to understand the “social 
behavior” of H20 do so at grave risk to their 
reputations and livelihoods because water 
science has suffered repeated fiascos. Water 
scientists have been virtually tarred and feathered.

Undaunted, one scientist has navigated the perils 
of water science by conducting dozens of simple, 
carefully controlled experiments and piecing 
together the first coherent account of water’s 
three dimensional structure and behavior.

Professor Pollack takes us on a fantastic voyage
through water, showing us a hidden universe 
teeming with physical activity that provides 
answers so simple that any curious person can 
understand. In conversational prose, Pollack 
relentlessly documents just where some scientists 
may have gone wrong with their Byzantine 
theories, and instead lays a simple foundation for 
understanding how changes of water structure 
underlie most energetic transitions of form and 
motion on Earth.

Pollack invites us to open our eyes and re-
experience our natural world, to take nothing for 
granted, and to reawaken our childhood dream of 
having things make sense.

Professor Gerald Pollack is Founding Editor-in-
Chief of the scientific journal, WATER and is 
recognized as an international leader in science 
and engineering.

The University of Washington Faculty chose 
Pollack, in 2008, to receive their highest annual 
distinction: the Faculty Lecturer Award. He was 
the 2012 recipient of the coveted Prigogine 
Medal for thermodynamics of dissipative 
systems. He has received an honorary doctorate 
from Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, 
Russia, and was more recently named an 
Honorary Professor of the Russian Academy of 
Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Srpska
Academy. Pollack is a Founding Fellow of the 
American Institute of Medical and Biological 
Engineering and a Fellow of both the American 
Heart Association and the Biomedical 
Engineering Society. He recently received an
NIH Director’s Transformative R01 Award for 
his work on water, and maintains an active 
laboratory in Seattle.

Pollack’s interests have ranged broadly, from 
biological motion and cell biology to the 
interaction of biological surfaces with aqueous 
solutions. His 1990 book, Muscles and 
Molecules: Uncovering the Principles 
of  Biological Motionwon an “Excellence 
Award” from the Society for Technical
Communication; his subsequent book, 
Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life
won that Society’s “Distinguished Award.”

Pollack is recognized worldwide as a dynamic 
speaker and a scientist willing to challenge any 
long-held dogma that does not fit the facts.

Water 'Exclusion Zone' (EZ): The “exclusion zone” 
(EZ), the unexpectedly large zone of water that 
forms next to many submersed materials, got its 
name because it excludes practically everything. 
The EZ contains a lot of charge, and its character 
differs from that of bulk water. Sometimes it is 
referred to as water’s fourth phase.

Electron and Proton : Electrons and protons are 
the elementary units of charge. They attract one 
another because one is positive and the other is 
negative. Electrons and protons play central 
roles in water’s behavior — more than you 
might think.

Water Molecule Charge : The water molecule is 
neutral. Oxygen has a charge of minus two, while 
each of the hydrogen atoms has a plus one 
charge. H2O net charge = 0

Hydronium Ion : Protons latch onto water 
molecules to form hydronium ions. Imagine a 
positively charged water molecule and you’ve 
got a hydronium ion. Charged species like 
hydronium ions are highly mobile and can 
wreak much havoc. H3O+.

Interfacial Battery : This battery comprises the 
exclusion zone and the bulk water zone beyond.
The respective zones are oppositely charged, 
and the separation is sustained, as in an ordinary 
battery. 

Radiant Energy : Radiant energy charges the 
battery. The energy comes from the sun and other
radiant sources. The water absorbs these energies 
and uses them to charge the battery.

Honeycomb Sheet : The honeycomb sheet is the 
EZ’s unitary structure. Sheets stack parallel to 
the material surface to build the EZ.  

Ice : The atomic structure of ice closely
resembles the atomic structure of the exclusion 
zone. This similarity is beyond coincidence: 
one transforms readily into the other.

Droplet : The water droplet consists of an EZ 
shell that envelops bulk water. The two
components have opposite charges.

Bubble : The bubble is structured like the droplet,
except that it has a gaseous interior. Commonly, 
that gas is water vapor.

Vesicle : Since droplets and bubbles are similarly 
constructed, we introduce the generic label: 
vesicle. A vesicle can be a droplet or a bubble, 
depending on the phase of the water inside. 
When a droplet absorbs enough energy, it can 
become a bubble. 

 SECTION I
Water Riddles: Forging the Pathway

1 . Surrounded by Mysteries

Beaker in hand, two students rushed down the 
hall to show me some thing unexpected. 
Unfortunately, their result vanished before I 
could take a look. But it was no fluke. The next 
day the phenomenon reappeared, and it became 
clear why the students had reacted with such 
excitement: they had witnessed a water-based 
phenomenon that defied explanation.

Water covers much of the earth. It pervades the 
skies. It fills your cells — to a greater extent than 
you might be aware. Your cells are two-thirds
water by volume; however, the water molecule is 
so small that if you were to count every single 
molecule in your body, 99% of them would be 
water molecules. That many water molecules are 
needed to make up the two-thirds volume. Your 
feet tote around a huge sack of mostly water molecules.

What do we know about those water molecules? 
Scientists study them, but rarely do they concern 
themselves with the large ensembles of water 
molecules that one finds in beakers. Rather, most 
scientists focus on the single molecule and its 
immediate neighbors, hoping to extrapolate what 
they learn to larger-scale phenomena that we can 
see. Everyone seeks to understand the observable 
behavior of water, i.e., how its molecules act 
“socially.”

Do we really understand water’s social behavior?

Since water is everywhere, you might reasonably 
conclude that we understand it completely. I 
challenge you to confirm that common 
presumption. Below, I present a collection of 
everyday observations, along with a handful of 
simple laboratory observations. See if you can 
explain them. If you can, then I lose; you may 
stop reading this book. If the explanations remain 
elusive even after consulting the abundant 
available sources, then I ask you to reconsider 
the presumption that we know everything there 
is to know about water.

I think we don’t. Let’s see how you fare.

Everyday Mysteries

Here are fifteen everyday observations. Can you 
explain them?

Wet sand vs. dry sand. When stepping into dry 
sand, you sink deeply, but you hardly sink into the 
wet sand near the water’s edge. Wet sand is so 
firm that you can use it for building sturdy castles 
or large sand sculptures. The water evidently 
serves as an adhesive. But how exactly does water 
glue those sand particles together? (The answer is
revealed in Chapter 8.)

Ocean waves. Waves ordinarily dissipate after 
traveling a relatively short distance. However, 
tsunami waves can circumnavigate the Earth
several times before finally petering out. Why do 
they persist for such immense distances? (See Chapter 16.)

Gelatin desserts. Gelatin desserts are mostly 
water. With all that water inside, you’d expect a 
lot of leakage (Fig. 1.1). However, none occurs. 
Even from gels that are as much as 99.95% water,
[1] we see no dribbling. Why doesn’t all that 
water leak out? (Read Chapters 4 and 11.) 
(Fig. 1.1 What keeps the water from dribbling out 
of the Jell-O?)

Diapers. Similar to gels, diapers can hold lots of 
water: more than 50 times their weight of urine 
and 800 times their weight of pure water. How 
can they hold so much water? (Look at Chapter 11.)

Slipperiness of ice. Solid materials don’t usually 
slide past one another so easily: think of your 
shoes planted on a hilly street. Friction keeps you 
from sliding. If the hill is icy, however, then you 
must exercise great care to keep from falling on 
your face. Why does ice behave so differently 
from most solids? (Chapter 12 explains.)

Swelling. Your friend breaks her ankle during a 
tennis match. Her ankle swells to twice its normal 
size within a couple of minutes. Why does water 
rush so quickly into the wound? (Chapter 11 
offers an answer.)

Freezing warm water. A precocious middle-
school student once observed something odd in 
his cooking class. From a powdered ice cream 
mix he could produce his frozen treat faster by 
adding warm water instead of cold water. This 
paradoxical observation has become famous. 
How is it that warm water can freeze more 
rapidly than cold water? (See Chapter 17.)

Rising water. Leaves are thirsty. In order to 
 through evaporation in plants and trees, water 
flows upward from the roots through narrow 
columns. The commonly offered explanation
asserts that the tops of the columns exert an 
upward drawing force on the water suspended 
beneath. In 100-meter-tall redwood trees, 
however, this is problematic: the weight of the 
water amassed in each capillary would suffice to 
break the column. Once broken, a column can no 
longer draw water from the roots. How does 
nature avert this debacle? (Check out Chapter 15.)

Breaking concrete. Concrete sidewalks can be 
cracked open by upwelling tree roots. The roots 
consist mainly of water. How is it possible that 
water-containing roots can exert enough pressure 
to break slabs of concrete? (Look through Chapter 
12.)

Droplets on surfaces. Water droplets bead up on 
some surfaces and spread out on others. The 
degree of spread serves, in fact, as a basis for 
classifying diverse surfaces. Assigning a 
classification, however, doesn’t explain why the 
droplets spread, or how far they spread. What 
forces cause a water droplet to spread? (Go to
Chapter 14.)

Walking on water. Perhaps you’ve seen videos 
of “Jesus Christ” lizards walking on pond 
surfaces. The lizards scamper from one end to
the other. Water’s high surface tension comes to 
mind as a plausible explanation, but if surface 
tension derives from the top few molecular layers 
only, then that tension should be feeble. What is 
it about the water (or about the lizard) that 
makes possible this seemingly biblical feat?
 (Read Chapter 16.)

Isolated clouds. Water vapor rises from vast 
uninterrupted reaches of the ocean’s water. That 
vapor should be everywhere. Yet puffy white 
clouds will often form as discrete entities, 
punctuating an otherwise clear blue sky (Fig. 
1.2). What force directs the diffuse rising vapor 
towards those specific sites? (Chapters 8 and 15
consider this issue.)

Squeaky joints. Deep knee bends don’t 
generally elicit squeaks. That’s because water 
provides excellent lubrication between bones 
(actually, between cartilage layers that line the 
bones). What feature of water creates that 
vanishingly small friction? (Take a look at 
Chapter 12.)

Ice floats. Most substances contract when 
cooled. Water contracts as well — until 4 °C. 
Below that critical temperature water begins 
expanding, and very much so as it transitions to 
ice. That’s why ice floats. What’s special about 
4 °C; and, why is ice so much less dense than 
water? (Chapter 17 answers these questions.)

Yoghurt’s consistency. Why does yoghurt hold 
together as firmly as it does? (See Chapter 8.)

Mysteries from the Laboratory

I next consider some simple laboratory 
observations, beginning with the one seen by 
those students rushing down the hall to show me
what they’d found.

(i) The Mystery of the Migrating Microspheres

The students had done a simple experiment. They 
dumped a bunch of tiny spheres, known as 
“microspheres,” into a beaker of water. They 
shook the suspension to ensure proper mixing, 
covered the beaker to minimize evaporation, and 
then went home for a good night’s sleep.
The next morning, they returned to examine the 
result.

By conventional thinking, nothing much should 
have happened, besides possibly some settling at 
the bottom of the beaker. The suspension should 
have looked uniformly cloudy, as if you’d poured 
some droplets of milk into water and shaken it 
vigorously.

The suspension did look uniformly cloudy — for 
the most part. However, near the center of the 
beaker (looking down from the top), a clear 
cylinder running from top to bottom had 
inexplicably formed (Fig. 1.3). Clarity meant that 
the cylinder contained no microspheres.
Some mysterious force had driven the micro-
spheres out of a central core and toward the 
beaker’s periphery. If you’ve ever seen 2001: A
Space Odyssey, and the astonishment of the ape-
humans upon first seeing the perfect monolith, 
you have some sense of just how our jaws
dropped. This was something to behold.

Fig. 1.3 Near-central clear zone
in microsphere suspension. Why
does the microsphere-free cylinder
appear spontaneously?

So long as the initial conditions remained within 
a well-defined window, these clear cylinders 
showed up consistently; we could produce them 
again and again.[2]  The question: what drives 
the counterintuitive migration of the spheres 
away from the center? (Chapter 9 explains.)

(ii) The Bridge Made of Water

Another curious laboratory phenomenon, the so-
called “water bridge,” connects water across a 
gap between two glass beakers — if you can 
imagine. Although the water bridge is a century-
old curiosity, Elmar Fuchs and his colleagues 
pioneered a modern incarnation that has aroused 
interest worldwide.

The demonstration starts by filling the two 
beakers almost to their brims with water and then 
placing them side-by-side, lips touching. An 
electrode immersed in each beaker imposes a 
potential difference on the order of 10 kV. 
Immediately, water in one beaker jumps to the 
rim and bridges across to the other beaker. Once 
the bridge forms, the two beakers may be slowly 
separated. The bridge doesn’t break; it continues 
to elongate, spanning the gap between beakers 
even when the lips separate by as much as 
several centimeters. (Fig. 1.4). 

Fig. 1.4 The water-bridge. 
bridge made of water spans the gap
between two water-filled beakers.
What sustains the bridge?)

Astonishingly, the water-bridge hardly droops; it 
exhibits an almost ice-like rigidity, even though 
the experiment is carried out at room 
temperature.

I caution you to resist the temptation to repeat 
this high-voltage experiment unless you consider 
yourself immune to electrocution. Better to 
watch a video of this eye-popping phenomenon.
[w1] The question: what sustains the bridge 
made of water? (See Chapter 17.)

(iii) The Floating Water Droplet

Water should mix instantly with water. However, 
if you release water droplets from a narrow tube 
positioned just above a dish of water, those 
droplets will often float on the water surface for 
period of time before dissolving (Fig. 1.5). 
Sometimes the droplets may sustain themselves 
for up to tens of seconds. Even more 
paradoxically, droplets don’t dissolve as single 
unitary events; they dissolve in a succession of 
squirts into the pool beneath.[3] Their 
dissolution resembles a programmed dance.

Fig. 1.5 Water droplets persist on
water surface for some time. Why?

Floating water droplets can be seen in nature if 
you know where to look. A good time is just after 
a rainfall, when water drips from a ledge onto a 
puddle or from a sailboat’s gunwales onto the 
lake beneath. Even raindrops will sometimes 
float as they hit ground water directly. The 
obvious question: if water mixes naturally with 
water, then what feature might delay the natural 
coalescence? (Look at Chapters 13 and 16)

(iv) Lord Kelvin’s Discharge

Finally, Fig. 1.6 depicts another head-scratching 
observation. Water drawn from an upside-down 
bottle or an ordinary tap is split into two 
branches. Droplets fall from each branch, passing 
through metal rings as they descend into metallic 
containers. The rings and containers are cross-
connected with electrical wires, as shown.
Metal spheres project toward one another from 
each container through metallic posts, leaving 
an air gap of several millimeters between the spheres.

Fig. 1.6, The Kelvin water-dropper
demonstration. Rising water levels
create a high-voltage discharge.
Why does this happen?

Originally conceived by Lord Kelvin, this 
experiment produces a surprising result. Once 
enough droplets have descended, you begin
hearing a crackling sound. Then, soon after, a 
flash of lightning discharges across the gap, 
accompanied by an audible crack.

Electrical discharge can occur only if a large 
difference in electrical potential builds between 
the two containers. That potential difference
can easily reach 100,000 volts, depending on gap 
size. Yet, the massive separation of charge 
needed to create that potential difference builds 
from a single source of water.

Constructing one of these exotic devices at home 
is possible[w2]; however, observing the discharge 
on video is a lot simpler. A fine example is the 
one produced by Professor Walter Lewin,[w3] 
who demonstrates the discharge to a classroom 
full of awe-struck MIT freshmen. He then invites 
the students to explain the phenomenon as their 
homework assignment. Can you explain how a 
single source of water can yield this massive 
charge separation? (Read about it in Chapter 15.)

Lessons Learned from These Mysteries 

The phenomena presented in the foregoing 
sections defy easy explanation. Even prominent 
water scientists I know cannot come up with 
satisfying answers; most cannot get beyond the 
most superficial explanations. Something is 
evidently missing from our framework of
understanding; otherwise, the phenomena 
should be readily explainable — but they are not.

I want to reemphasize that we’re not dealing with 
water at the molecular level; we’re dealing with 
crowds of water molecules. We don’t yet 
understand water molecules’ interaction with 
other water molecules — water’s “social” 
behavior.

Social behavior is the purview of social scientists 
and clinicians, from whom we might learn. A 
friend of mine, a psychiatrist, once told me that, 
in order to understand human behavior, you 
should focus on oddballs and weirdos. Their 
behavioral extremes, the psychiatrist opined, 
provide clues for understanding the subtler 
behaviors of the rest of the population. That 
same reasoning can apply here: the foregoing
cases describe some situations where water 
exhibits extreme “social” behaviors; as such, 
they provide clues for understanding the more 
ordinary behaviors of water molecules.

Thus, rather than brushing aside our inability to 
explain the phenomena above, we exploit them 
for the clues they provide. We turn ignorance to 
advantage. You’ll see many examples of this 
process once we reach the book’s middle chapters.

The next chapter 2 , provides some helpful 
background. It considers what we already know 
about water’s social behavior and what we
don’t, but it focuses mainly on the surprising 
reasons why we know so little about Earth’s 
most common substance. 

Chapter 2. The Social Behavior of  H2O



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