Matter

Matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All such objects in the cosmos are composed of atoms which are made up of interacting subatomic particles. Matter exists in states or phases of solid, liquid, and gas (for example water exists as ice, liquid water, and steam) and the fourth state plasma. Exotic states include Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, and quark–gluon plasma.

Matter has a special relationship with energy called mass–energy equivalence whereby matter and energy can be used interchangeably and often is. The principle is described by the physicist Albert Einstein's famous formula: E=mc2.

Based on its physical and chemical structure, matter is made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

Using the, all matter is made up of fermions which are made up of quarks and leptons. Leptons (the most famous being the electron), and quarks (of which baryons, such as protons and neutrons, are made) combine to form atoms, which in turn form molecules.

Baryonic matter does not include dark energy, dark matter, black holes or various forms of degenerate matter. Therefore only about 5% of the universe is made of baryonic matter. Hadronic matter can include 'ordinary' baryonic matter, or quark matter and degenerate matter.

Bosons (which include photons and the force carriers gluons) are massless (with zero rest mass) and are therefore not matter. Other energy phenomena such as light and gravitational waves are also massless, and also don't have mass-energy equivalence.

The forces of nature are mediated by elementary particles:


 * electromagnetism by the photon
 * the strong interaction by gluons
 * the weak interaction by the W and Z bosons
 * gravitation by the graviton which is the hypothetical quantum of gravity and a massless state of a string.

A tachyon has complex or imaginary rest mass and is not massless. It can only be superluminal and travel faster than c. They speed up as they lose energy. At zero energy they have infinite velocity and are present everywhere in the universe at the same time (transcendental tachyon). Albert Einstein said that special relativity implies that faster-than-light particles could be used to communicate backwards in time. The Higgs boson also has an imaginary mass in its uncondensed phase.

Exotic matter
Exotic energy and matter are found naturally in neutron stars or black holes or cosmic events such as supernovas or the Big Bang. All these matter types have an associated exotic energy.