Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ninety-nine percent of all ordinary matter in the universe exists as plasma. This state makes up the glowing hearts of stars and the solar corona, while solid ground and air are rare exceptions.
In a solid, atoms are locked in a rigid arrangement and vibrate in place without changing positions. When heated to form a liquid, these particles gain enough energy to slide past one another while maintaining a constant volume.
Researchers Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman along with Wolfgang Ketterle successfully created the first Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995. This state occurs when a large fraction of atoms occupy the same lowest energy quantum state.
Electron-degenerate matter exists within white dwarf stars where electrons are forced into adjacent atoms. Neutron-degenerate matter forms the core of neutron stars where protons and electrons combine to create a superdense sea of neutrons.
When iron is heated to the Curie point, the alignment of its magnetic moments is lost and the material becomes paramagnetic. Ferromagnets like iron retain magnetism only when their atomic magnetic moments align in the same direction below this temperature.