Students learn that water has three phases: solid, liquid, and vapor. But there is something more: a fourth phase, recently discovered in our University of Washington laboratory. This phase builds when water meets any of various water-loving (hydrophilic) surfaces. It is surprisingly extensive, projecting out from those surfaces by up to millions of molecular layers. And it exists almost everywhere throughout nature, including your body.
This phase of water is described in a now-popular book: The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor. The book documents the basic experimental findings, and goes on to present many applications, both scientific and technological. And, it deals with the many implications of fourth-phase water for health.
The existence of a fourth phase of water may seem unexpected. However, it is not so radical an idea: more than a century ago, the distinguished physical chemist Sir William Hardy, argued for the necessity of a fourth phase; and many authors over the years have found evidence for some kind of “ordered” or “structured” phase of water.
Fresh experimental evidence not only confirms the existence of such an ordered, liquid-crystalline phase, but also details its properties. Those properties explain many everyday observations, and go on to answer questions ranging from why gelatin desserts hold their water, to why teapots whistle.
The buildup of any such ordered phase requires energy, and here the energy comes from the sun. Radiant energy converts ordinary (bulk) water into ordered water, building the ordered zone. We found that all wavelengths of light ranging from UV, through visible, to infrared can build this ordered water, the most capable being near-infrared energy. Water absorbs infrared energy freely from the environment; it uses that energy to convert bulk water into liquid crystalline (fourth-phase) water — which we also call “exclusion zone” or “EZ” water because it profoundly excludes solutes.
Hence, buildup of EZ water occurs naturally and spontaneously from environmental energy. Additional input energy creates further EZ buildup. Since infrared energy is abundant in the environment, fourth-phase water is likewise abundant.
The Fourth Phase of Water:
Toward a New Understanding of Nature and Health
by
Gerald H. Pollack, PhD
Professor of Bioengineering
University of Washington
Seattle Washington 98195
http://faculty.washington.edu/ghp/