The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor by Gerald H. Pollack

Abstract

This book describes an accomplished scientific revolution which, however, and as usual (Barber 1961), awaits recognition by the mainstream. Water, it turns out, does some extraordinary but well-attested things that have never been explained and which have been largely ignored for many decades. Gerald Pollack studied these anomalous phenomena in detail and presents explanations that stem from radical new insights. Thomas Kuhn's description of scientific revolutions (Kuhn 1970) applies perfectly here: Anomalies are ignored by the mainstream. Their resolution requires a fundamental change of mindset. The mainstream does not engage because it thinks so differently (the new and the old theories are "incommensurable"). Time has to pass before the mainstream incorporates the new understanding.

The conventional wisdom acknowledges that water has some unique properties: very high surface tension, very large latent heat, and that the solid phase is less dense than the liquid. All these are explicable as consequences of uniquely strong hydrogen bonding between water molecules. I learned that many decades ago as I studied chemistry to the doctorate level. Then I carried on research on electrochemical phenomena in aqueous solutions for several decades, and had no occasion to doubt the conventional view-until I came across this book.

I had not known about some things water can do that are well-attested and long-known-but known only to those who are familiar with specialist literature, some of which dates to more than a century ago. For example, there is Kelvin's water-dropper: Water drips from a container through two separate outlets into two metal beakers, each of which is attached to a rod ending in a metal sphere. The two spheres are placed near each other. After a while, a spark bridges the gap between the spheres, even though no electrical voltage or current has been applied! (Free Science Lectures). And, of course, everyone knows that pure water doesn't even conduct electricity. Still, take two beakers of water whose lips are touching, apply a voltage across them through immersed electrodes, and a bridge of water will form between the lips-and the beakers can then be slowly moved apart while the bridge remains, without even drooping, as the separation between beakers becomes as great as several centimeters. Explained by hydrogen bonding?

Start reading this book not at its beginning but at Chapter 1, where these and other astonishing phenomena are described, and you'll be hooked.

Little if any technical background knowledge is needed to follow the descriptions and explanations in this volume, but you may need to read it quite slowly, as I had to, because the basic insights on which explanations build are so unfamiliar:

In the presence of any hydrophilic surface, water spontaneously undergoes a separation of charges, thereby storing energy that can be drawn off. Incident electromagnetic radiation provides the energy needed for the initial charge separation.

These assertions seem so bizarre that I would have rejected them out of hand if the book had declared them at the outset. Instead, the text begins with evidence. Following descriptions of well-attested anomalies such as the water bridge and the Kelvin dropper comes an account of yet another extraordinary phenomenon. Inside a tunnel through a gel, place water filled uniformly with microspheres: After a while, the microspheres move to the center of the tunnel, leaving the space near the gel completely free of microspheres-they have been excluded from that space, which was therefore christened the "exclusion zone" (EZ) by early investigators.