Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:A computer model helped isolate a “pinball state” where matter switches back and forth between states. Scientists from Florida State University are highlighting a weird state of matter in in the peer reviewed journal Nature Partner Journals Quantum Materials. As it turns out, under the right conditions, carefully patterned electrons enter what the researchers are calling a “pinball state,” where their charge attraction switches on and off. And under the right, weird conditions (and in the right, weird shapes), the system can “bounce” between states of matter like a pinball. This behavior was previously theorized, the researchers explain, but their more-realized computer model shows that the pinball state is plausible in real life... but maybe only inside a near-absolute-zero freezer.