In high school and college, many people who studied chemistry may have learned that there are only four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Where would the glass fall in these states? Most people you ask might say it's solid, of course. You can touch it and hit it and it will not yield to your hand. It makes up our windows and protects us from the elements, so why shouldn't it be solid? Well surprisingly the state of glass, or the transition of molten glass to a more solid glass, seems to be a much debated topic in the scientific world. In fact, in the 125th anniversary issue of Science Magazine, which contained the world's one hundred most important unanswered scientific questions, question 22 was: "What is the nature of the glassy state?" and question 21 goes hand in hand: “Is superfluidity possible in a solid?” (Science,2005). It seems that glass is a state in itself, between liquid and solid. To understand the state of glass we must first understand the different states of matter. All matter is composed of states and can move through these four existing states. The solid state is where the atoms of a substance are tightly bonded together and the only movement is the vibration of the atoms. The liquid state is one in which the atoms are arranged together without any order with a defined volume, but can move next to each other without giving it a defined shape. According to the 1926 Science Magazine article, glass exhibits traits of both of these states. It is similar to a liquid in that its atoms are arranged randomly, but it has the rigid, fixed bonding of a solid and the same high heat capacity (Science). This Science Magazine article is a little dated though, and science changes dramatically over the years, especially... middle of the paper... evidence of how solid it would be or even how it might happen to be one. It seems that this debate is evenly divided among specialists. Even more interesting is that most chemists and materials specialists seem to believe that glass is clearly an amorphous solid and have scientific facts such as the structure of amorphous solids has long been defined. On the other hand, we see more and more physicists concluding that glass is either not yet a defined state or is a “supercooled” liquid moving at a speed too slow to be defined. The solution to the glass transition still requires many years of research and does not appear to be reached any time soon. Glass could also be a state of its own outside of the four common states of matter. In the words of Dr. Harrowell, “Glass is an example, probably the simplest example, of the truly complex process”.