Emulsions

Emulsions are pretty much everywhere. Some example are milk, mayonnaise, vinaigrettes, creams and lotions. So what exactly is an emulsion? Well, it is a mixture of two immiscible liquids. What are immiscible liquids? They are liquids that do not mix in all proportions. Huh, aren't those conflicting statements? Kind of, but no. Immiscible liquids don't mix on the molecular level, but they become dispersed in each other.Oil and water are the most common set of immiscible liquids, but there are many others. In fact, you can make multiphasic emulsions that are comprised of a set of more than two mutually immiscible liquids. For example, liquid silicone is immiscible with both oil and water. Neat stuff.

A good example of an emulsion is a vinaigrette. If you shake it up you see the little balls of vinegar in the oil. This is what happens in milk too, but the balls of fat are so small that you can't see them with your naked eye. But milk doesn't separate, so how can milk and vinaigrettes both be emulsions? A vinaigrette is an example of an unstable emulsion because it separates over time and milk is an example of a stable emulsion. Milk is not naturally stable, but it has been stabilized through the use of proteins that lie on the fat-water interface. Emulsions can also be stabilized with particles, in which case they are called Pickering emulsions (as are emulsions stabilized with proteins), or they can be stabilized with surfactants (e.g. soap).

Globules of dark matter in space

And now it's time for the crazy talk that will be forgotten to the sands of time, but I actually hope someone says, wow, that's not half bad. So, similar to my musing in my foam post, you could do the whole poppin' possibilities thing with emulsion coalescence (when to oil bubbles merge and form a larger bubble). But reeling it in a bit, but only a little bit, if you think of matter and  dark matter as a set of immiscible liquids...we live in an emulsion! Maybe even a multiphasic one with matter, antimatter and empty space all being immiscible? Above is a picture of a slice of the dark matter in the universe. Just something to think about.