I had yet another senior moment today! Since my childhood in the 1960's I have been safe in the knowledge that my world was made up of three reliable states of matter: gases, liquids and solids. Alas, my reliance on this holy trinity was shattered when I discovered that there is indeed a fourth state of matter, that of PLASMA! Now, like most people, I've come across the term in various guises such as blood plasma, plasma drives and more recently, plasma TV's, but I'd never associated the term with a new phase of matter. On further investigation online I further discover that Plasma is not only everywhere but makes up the vast majority of the Universe! People's lexikon Wiki even describes countless-more non-classical states such as Strange and Degenerate Matter! The mind boggles!
No doubt readers will now inform me that world of Sci-Fi and the Anderverse, if not SWORD itself, are full of references to Plasma! Doh!
Yet another form of matter: spamoplasma!
ReplyDeleteand lets not get started on Dark Matter! Taxes the grey matter!
ReplyDeleteStars are made of plasma (which is just gas heated up so much the gas particles start to fall to bits!), which is why the universe could be said to be made mainly of plasma, but there isn't anywhere near enough visible matter (ie stars), to account for the structures we see (galaxies etc) so gravity must have something else to be pulling on, namely this mysterious 'Dark Matter', which might not be plasma, it could be anything!
ReplyDeleteIt's a strange old universe!
imagine if somebody figured out how to widen the human visible spectrum and we peered out of a spaceship porthole one day! Probably find its not such an empty vacuum and theres a lot more goin on than we realise !
ReplyDeletePut a grape in an old microwave oven and see what plasma can do! We had some courgettes arc the other day, small sample, no liquid and their own steam had enough metal ions to create a mini-star!
ReplyDeleteBurnt the courgette slices like toast and melted the microwavable tray they were in, not sure it's good for the microwave either!
'instedge tionoldE'...arc'ed vedgetable soup!
Don't forget the fifth state...Condensates!
ReplyDelete