We are all familiar with the three most common forms of matter that we see around us everyday: solid, liquid, gas. However, matter behaves in strange ways when exposed to high temperatures and pressures. For example, at high temperatures (typically tens of thousands of degrees), the gaseous state transforms into a state called plasma, where the atoms are shorn of some or all electrons. This is state that the solar corona is composed of. Similarly, at extremely low temperatures (millionth of degrees above Absolute Zero), matter takes on states dictated by Quantum Mechanics, viz. supersolid and superfluid (also known as Bose-Einstein Condensate).

Rotating ball of gas, punctured with vortices (Courtesy: MIT)Now scientists from MIT have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity! The work, to be published in Nature, will solve lingering questions about superconductivity.
Superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon, seen (as of yet) only in certain materials at very close to Absolute Zero. In such a situation, the material loses all resistance to electric current! This is very exciting since if perfected, we can save huge amounts of energy, since most of the electrical transmission losses are due to resistance in the wires.
Similar to superconductivity, where electricity loses all resistance, a superfluid gas can flow without resistance (say through a pipe). When the pipe is rotated, an ordinary gas would rotate with it, thus creating vortices. But a superfluid can only rotate when it forms vortices similar to mini-tornadoes. This gives a rotating superfluid the appearance of Swiss cheese, where the holes are the cores of the mini-tornadoes, like the picture above. The gas was cooled down to 50 billionths of one degree abouve Absolute Zero!!
Interestingly, the gas can also serve as a model for studying properties of much denser forms of matter such as solid superconductors, neutron stars or the quark-gluon plasma that existed in the early universe :):).