We recently watched a Nova Video about the obstacles we would face traveling to mars, and in passing, they mentioned powering a spaceship with plasma. You know, just plasma… no big deal… !!!!!!! And then I realized that I don’t really know what plasma is, so I read Wikipedia and here is my basic understanding. Feel free to tell me more! Please!
Apparently plasma is the most common phase of matter in the universe, which I guess makes sense, when you think about stars, but is pretty crazy considering that most of what I interact with on a daily basis is NOT plasma.
Plasma is like a gas in that it has no definite shape or volume without a container. However, and this is the cool part, when under the influence of a magnetic field, it may form structures such as filaments, beams, and double layers. This is because plasma is made of charge carriers (free particles carrying an electric charge (ions, electrons…)).
Plasma is generally quasineutral, which means its positively and negatively charged particles balance out. Interactions within the bulk of the plasma, where the charge carriers are influencing each other, fill the plasma with electrical and magnetic currents, and are more important than any interactions taking place along the border of the plasma.
Another cool thing about plasma is that its electrical conductivity can generally be treated as infinite. Yeah, definitely not a gas.
In summary, Josh Ritter’s opening line in Kathleene roughly translates to “All the other girls here are plasma in outer space, you are plasma in the earth’s upper atmosphere.” or perhaps “You’re all just plasma to me.”.
If you have any thoughts on plasma, or corrections of anything I’ve said, chime in!
Geddes
- April 20
- , 2011
