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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff from hof dot com. Hello everyone, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and I

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Speaker 1: am an editor at how Stuff works dot com. Sitting

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Speaker 1: across from me, as always, his senior writer, Jonathan, the

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Speaker 1: Seller of Lightning Rods arrived just ahead of the storm.

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Speaker 1: Wait seller or seller s E L L E er uh.

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Speaker 1: And technically that's cheating because that's the first line from

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Speaker 1: chapter one of a book, but there is a prologue

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Speaker 1: to that book. But I wanted to use that line

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Speaker 1: because it kind of ties into what we're talking about today, which,

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Speaker 1: by the way, comes to us courtesy of a little

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Speaker 1: Facebook feedback. You and this comes to us from our

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Speaker 1: friend Bassu, who says, Hey, Jonathan, our plasma ray guns possible.

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Speaker 1: I'm waiting for the next podcast on this. Well, here's

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Speaker 1: our next podcast on plasma reguns. But before we get

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Speaker 1: into the idea of weaponizing plasma, let's talk a bit

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Speaker 1: about what plasma is and maybe some common or at

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Speaker 1: least more realistic applications for plasma that that we used today. Okay, So,

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Speaker 1: so plasma it is the fourth state of matter. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's funny to me because growing up, um, perhaps my

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Speaker 1: my school system was narrow minded, although I don't think so.

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Speaker 1: We we learned about solids likewids and gases. Those were

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Speaker 1: the three states of matter and that's all there were. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the pronosaurus was a dinosaur exactly. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: probably because I would guess it's probably more because growing up,

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Speaker 1: plasma is a little hard to grasp. It's I figured out. Literally,

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Speaker 1: I figured up, yes, because if you can't, it hurts. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I'll the way I figure the best explanation would be

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Speaker 1: look at it from the stance of molecular movement. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so with solids, the solids are made up of molecules,

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Speaker 1: and those molecules don't move a lot. They are moving.

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Speaker 1: So even in that granite table that you might see

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Speaker 1: that the molecules within that granite table are actually in motion,

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Speaker 1: they're just not moving a lot. You can take it

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Speaker 1: for granite that they'll stay put. Yes, And then in

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Speaker 1: liquids you have a little more molecular movement, and the

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Speaker 1: the actual composition of the matter it acts differently. Right,

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Speaker 1: So ice is a solid. Water is a liquid, and

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Speaker 1: then if you add more energy into the system and

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Speaker 1: you create more molecular movement, you can make that liquid

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Speaker 1: turn into a gas. And in the gas, you've got

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Speaker 1: a lot more molecular movement. The molecules aren't as packed

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Speaker 1: closely as close together as it would be in a

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Speaker 1: liquid or in a solid, and that's when you've got

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Speaker 1: the gas form. Well, plasma is the next step. It's

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Speaker 1: when you've added even more energy into that that element,

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Speaker 1: and this also tends to strip away electrons ionizing that gas.

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Speaker 1: So you've got free electrons flowing through the gas that

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Speaker 1: an ionized gas that is plasma. So in a way,

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Speaker 1: you can think of plasma is sort of a subset

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Speaker 1: of gas, but it's really its own thing because it's

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Speaker 1: an ionized gas, Jonathan, it strips away electrons. Are you sure? Well,

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Speaker 1: it pushes electrons way out into the outer shells. I was.

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Speaker 1: I was going for the joke there they lose electrons.

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Speaker 1: Are you sure? I'm positive? OK? No. The reason why

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Speaker 1: I said that is because literally this week phil Plate

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Speaker 1: the Bad Astronomer, wrote a post about ionizing atmosphere conditions

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Speaker 1: and how that creates are the auroras to the Aurora

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Speaker 1: borealis and the Aurora estrallis, and he had written about

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Speaker 1: how it strips electrons away from oxygen and then later

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Speaker 1: corrected himself saying, all right, technically that is not correct.

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Speaker 1: What really happens is that the electrons are pushed to

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Speaker 1: the further energy shells around the nucleus of the atom,

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Speaker 1: and when the electrons come back down to their natural

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Speaker 1: energy shell, photons are released. And that's the aurora. So

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Speaker 1: that's why I wanted to not do the I'm positive

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Speaker 1: off the bat okay okay, Um, you can tell we

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Speaker 1: don't we We sort of prepare, but we don't rehearse. Um.

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Speaker 1: It's funny too that that we think about plasmas being

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Speaker 1: the fourth state of matter, and the way it's uh

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Speaker 1: kind of strange because um plasma is far more prevalent

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Speaker 1: in our universe, most plentiful state of matter, of all

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Speaker 1: matter in the universe, all anything that's not dark matter,

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Speaker 1: whether or not that exists isn't isn't totally different subject matter.

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Speaker 1: But that's really too many matters. But yes, of all

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Speaker 1: the matter that we have observed, plasma makes up. And

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Speaker 1: you might think, well, that's weird be because everything I

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Speaker 1: encounter tends to be either a solid liquid or a gas.

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Speaker 1: I very rarely encounter plasma. Well, that's because you don't

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Speaker 1: live on the Sun. I have encountered a couple of

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Speaker 1: people who have encountered plasma firsthand, um, more than once,

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Speaker 1: because they have been hit by lightning. Yes, and that's

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Speaker 1: what I was saying with my quote at the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the show. Lightning is something that can create plasmas.

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Speaker 1: Where the ways that we can find naturally occurring plasma

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Speaker 1: on Earth. The plasma does not last very long. Um.

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Speaker 1: But we'll get into that in a second. And I

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Speaker 1: would avoid coming into contact with plasma as often as possible. Now,

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Speaker 1: there are other plasmas that we encounter. Anything, any sort

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Speaker 1: of ionized gas is a plasma. There are some that

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Speaker 1: are considered cold plasmas. And by cold, we're talking in

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Speaker 1: terms of relativity here, right, you know, it's just it's

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Speaker 1: colder than say the plasma you would find shooting out

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Speaker 1: of the Sun. And then there's blood plasma, right, which

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Speaker 1: is totally different, totally not the same stuff, but like

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Speaker 1: a neon sign that's that's an ionized gas within the

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Speaker 1: neon is ionized within that sign that technically is a

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Speaker 1: plasma it's just not the same quite quite the same

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Speaker 1: thing is what we would find, say a plasma cutter,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of what I wanted to talk about,

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Speaker 1: because plasma cutter, that's something that's it's a tool that

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Speaker 1: we use that can cut through really sturdy, thick sheets

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Speaker 1: of metal. And it's really impressive if you ever see

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Speaker 1: one of these in action, because you might look at

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Speaker 1: a sheet of metal and you think that, how the

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Speaker 1: heck are you supposed to shape this so that you

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Speaker 1: can use it in various applications like building airplanes. In fact,

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Speaker 1: building airplanes is kind of where the idea for plasma

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Speaker 1: cutters came into play. Yes, that's that's true. And they

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Speaker 1: plasma cutters not only cut through metal, they do it

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Speaker 1: like butter. Yeah, like butter. I'll give you a topic.

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Speaker 1: Plasma Plasma cutters are are really, if you will pardon

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Speaker 1: my again over simplification, really really fancy because not only

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Speaker 1: are they cutting their cutting very precisely, and they tend

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Speaker 1: to uh basically the way they cut through it, they

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Speaker 1: do it uh in a temperature so hot that it

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Speaker 1: it steals off the metal and prevents corrosion. Yes. Um,

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Speaker 1: again that's an oversimplification. Let's get into what's really going

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Speaker 1: on here. Sure, So back during World War Two, there

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Speaker 1: was a demand for building aircraft very very very quickly. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and that's that's kind of a problem because aircraft are

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Speaker 1: very complex, very large devices. So that meant that, you know,

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Speaker 1: you had to find a new way to go into

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Speaker 1: mass production. And so there were different experiments being done

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Speaker 1: about new means of welding materials together. And uh, some

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Speaker 1: folks discovered that if they used a gas and inert

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Speaker 1: gas fed through an electric arc, so they create an

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Speaker 1: electric arc between a couple of electrodes and they shoot

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Speaker 1: gas through that arc, that they could create a very

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Speaker 1: effective welding tool. Now, um, so that was sort of

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Speaker 1: the basis of the plasma cutter. Now, this was not

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Speaker 1: used to cut. This was used to weld, so welding

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Speaker 1: different sheets of metal together, yes, exactly so, uh, but

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Speaker 1: that that started the foundation. What happened was in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties some engineers figured out that they could actually

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Speaker 1: increase the temperatures of this this uh, this plasma by

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Speaker 1: speeding up the flow of gas and by controlling the

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Speaker 1: diameter of the nozzle. So if they decrease the diameter,

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Speaker 1: they're they're making it, you know, narrower, and they're increasing

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Speaker 1: the flow of gas and they're pushing it through this electrode.

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Speaker 1: It would actually increase the temperature quite a few orders

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Speaker 1: of magnitude. Yes, And this is where the idea of

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Speaker 1: using this to cut through metals started to come into play.

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Speaker 1: And uh, technically, the typical plasma cutter uses the sheet

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Speaker 1: of metal that it's cutting as part of a circuit.

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Speaker 1: So you've got to think about the parts of a

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Speaker 1: of a plasma cutter. You've got an electrode inside of it,

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Speaker 1: that's what that's what's providing the the the charge. You've

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Speaker 1: got the cutting gas that is inside of it. This

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Speaker 1: is the the inert gas that's going to be passed

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Speaker 1: through this electric charge and superheated to plasma. And then

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Speaker 1: you've got a controlling gas that's around that that actually

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Speaker 1: is used to help concentrate the flow of the cutting gas.

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Speaker 1: It's it's so you've got the nozzle that's helping concentrate

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Speaker 1: the flow, and if you've got a second gas that's

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Speaker 1: also sort of pushing against that cutting gas, keeping it

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Speaker 1: nice and tight. And then Once you put the the

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Speaker 1: plasma cutter against the piece of metal, then that creates

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Speaker 1: a circuit. The shock from or the charge from the

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Speaker 1: electrode goes to the metal. The metal has sort of

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Speaker 1: a positive charge to it the and and we know

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Speaker 1: that the negative wants to go to positive, so the

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Speaker 1: electricity hits the metal. The gas flowing through the nozzle

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Speaker 1: is ionized, becomes plasma and superheats and actually turns metal

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Speaker 1: into into molten material at the blink of an eye.

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Speaker 1: And that's when you can just start cutting through it

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Speaker 1: like it was as Chris said. But yeah, one, when

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Speaker 1: you're reaching temperatures of thirty degrees fahrenheit, that's degrees celsius.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty hot. And when we're talking about increasing the

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Speaker 1: flow of the gas, we're talking this this gas is

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Speaker 1: flowing at a rate of around twenty thousand feet per second.

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Speaker 1: Do you know how many meters per second? That is?

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Speaker 1: Courting on my fingers about six someone's been reading how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. We do have an article on

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Speaker 1: how plasma cutters work at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: which is it's a good thing to read about. And

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Speaker 1: if any of this sounds familiar to you, guys, then

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Speaker 1: you've been listening to tech stuff for a really long time,

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Speaker 1: because we did do an episode ages ago about plasma

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Speaker 1: waste converters and what a plasma waste converter is. It's

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Speaker 1: a really cool application of this technology. It's essentially using

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Speaker 1: a device similar to a plasma cutter a plasma torch

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Speaker 1: to create this incredibly super hot ionized gas in order

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Speaker 1: to liquefy or gasify trash. So, depending upon what the

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Speaker 1: trash is made out of, it will either turn into

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Speaker 1: a gas because you know what's the plasma has applied

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Speaker 1: to it, or it will liquefy uh. So essentially car

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Speaker 1: carbon based uh elements, anything that's carbon based within the

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Speaker 1: trash is going to gas suffi uh and everything else

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Speaker 1: liquefies and um it's you can use that gas depending

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Speaker 1: on on what you're producing. You can actually use that

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Speaker 1: gas as fuel. And the liquefied stuff, once it cools,

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Speaker 1: turns into stuff that looks kind of like obsidian. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I have I have a sample of that because when

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Speaker 1: I did the article, I visited a engineer at Georgia

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Speaker 1: Tech who gave me a sample of this solidified waste

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Speaker 1: which looked like it was a volcano rock, which essentially

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Speaker 1: is what it is kind of. So anyway, that's another

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Speaker 1: interesting use of plasma technology. Now let's kind of talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the concept of plasma weapons. So

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Speaker 1: we had our listeners specifically asked us, like our plasma

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Speaker 1: ray guns possible? Um In a word, no, at least

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Speaker 1: not with today's technology. And there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: different reasons for this. One of those is that um plasma,

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Speaker 1: if you were to generate plasma at a at a

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Speaker 1: temperature that would be considered weaponized. So we're talking about

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Speaker 1: you know, hot hot plasma UM. You have the problem

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Speaker 1: of heat dispersing too quickly. So, uh, the the ionized

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Speaker 1: gas would lose a lot of energy as soon as

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Speaker 1: it leaves wherever wherever you're generating it, right, So at

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Speaker 1: the point of generation, it's going to be very, very hot.

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Speaker 1: So if I were point blank right up against you

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Speaker 1: and I pushed a weapon against you and I pulled

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Speaker 1: the trigger, then yeah, you're gonna get cut in half,

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Speaker 1: or you're gonna have a whole drill through you, essentially,

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Speaker 1: But if you're you know, twenty feet away, this ionized

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Speaker 1: gas is going to be losing energy at a very

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Speaker 1: fast rate, and as it loses energy, it's going to

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Speaker 1: revert back to a regular gas and you can't really

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Speaker 1: get it to travel very far. And it also disperses.

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Speaker 1: So if you were to have the ionized gas come

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Speaker 1: out of the end of a ray gun, it's not

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Speaker 1: gonna be a ray or a beam, right, It's not

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Speaker 1: gonna move forward in a concentrated beam. It's going to

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Speaker 1: disperse outward, it's gonna bloom. So in that sense, you

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Speaker 1: also don't really have much of a weapon because the

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Speaker 1: further away the person is, it's it's just like a

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Speaker 1: shotgun in a way. You know, a shotgun shoots shot

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Speaker 1: and that shot spreads as it goes out, So the

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Speaker 1: further away someone is, the less concentrated the impact will

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Speaker 1: be right right, So same sort of thing, except even

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Speaker 1: on a bigger scale, because we're talking about individual atoms here,

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Speaker 1: not just uh shot. And so that's another problem, um,

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Speaker 1: And there are various ways of getting around this. If

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Speaker 1: you had a gun that somehow could create an electrical

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Speaker 1: charge all the way down to wherever your target is,

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Speaker 1: it could ionize the gas immediately around the electrode. But

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Speaker 1: in that case you're talking about some sort of superpowered taser. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you'll remember, if you think of it as as

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Speaker 1: the plasma cutter, you'll remember that in our discussion on

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Speaker 1: how it worked, just a moment ago, UM, Jonathan was

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Speaker 1: pointing out that the metal that's being cut requires uh

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Speaker 1: is is basically charged. It's part, it becomes part of

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Speaker 1: the circuit. So if you were shooting at something five

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Speaker 1: feet away, for example, UM, it's going to be very difficult.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can't circuit. You can't you don't have

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Speaker 1: a circuit. UM. Also, you'll remember that Jonathan was talking

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Speaker 1: about the gas that's on the outside of the pressurized

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Speaker 1: gas that is used to cut UM, that's controlling the

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Speaker 1: the cutting of the plasma cutter. Without that, UM, it's

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Speaker 1: exactly what Jonathan says. You don't have a real way

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Speaker 1: to control it. And you might say, well what about lightning. Well,

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Speaker 1: lightning it forks it's not controlled. UM. So yes, lightning

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Speaker 1: can can travel a long distance, but it also it's

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Speaker 1: a charge. We know that the ground and the clouds

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Speaker 1: are charged differently. Yeah, it's essentially a circuit. It's a

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Speaker 1: certually that only lasts a moment. But you know it's

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Speaker 1: not so if you had if you somehow arranged it

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Speaker 1: so that everyone on the enemy's side war of particular

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Speaker 1: suit that should positively charge clothing, so that I could

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Speaker 1: use this negatively charged electrode to create a circuit between

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Speaker 1: me and you. Then I can vaporize you. That would

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Speaker 1: be great. So yeah, it's a little tricky. Um, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of other issues with this, but

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Speaker 1: there that's not the only way to weaponize plasma. That's

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Speaker 1: you know, that's if you were to have a gun,

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Speaker 1: like in the Halo universe. In the Halo University, aliens

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Speaker 1: have plasma weapons and they shoot these kind of blobs

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Speaker 1: of energy, which you know, essentially it's like uh, blobs

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Speaker 1: of of superheated gas and they travel as if it

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Speaker 1: were a solid projectile and uh like little sunlits. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: these little energy weapons that can do massive amounts of damage,

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Speaker 1: particularly literally to your shields, right against shields. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: supercharger plasma pistol and then immediately switched to your regular pistol.

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Speaker 1: It's in a great way of anyway. So that's just

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Speaker 1: not viable right now. The equipment we would need to

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Speaker 1: create plasma is much larger than what you could have

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Speaker 1: in a handheld gun and you just wouldn't have those results.

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Speaker 1: But that's not the only way. There are other ways.

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Speaker 1: Like there's an example, there's a weapon that's been worked

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Speaker 1: on by the US government over the last few years

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Speaker 1: called a pulsed energy projectile weapon or p e P. Now,

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Speaker 1: this creates a uses. It uses a very high powered

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Speaker 1: um laser style weapon. So it's not a plasma weapon

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Speaker 1: at its at its source, right, it's just create it's

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Speaker 1: just firing off energy. It's an inner g weapon. And

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Speaker 1: the idea is that when the energy contacts something solid,

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Speaker 1: then it creates a plasma. It actually excites the material

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Speaker 1: that it contacts with and that's what creates the plasma.

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Speaker 1: So the plasma is not contained within the weapon, uh,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's just it generates as soon as the

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Speaker 1: ray hits something solid. And then at that point what

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Speaker 1: happens is the plasma that's generated quickly starts to expand

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Speaker 1: because the energy from the ray is continuing to hit it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So that expanding plasma creates an electromagnetic magnetic pulse, and

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Speaker 1: this pulse is geared to uh kind of short circuit

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Speaker 1: our pain receptors. And the idea is that this weapon

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Speaker 1: would either paralyze you. It would just make all you know,

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Speaker 1: your muscles contract, kind of like a massive taser, or

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Speaker 1: would paralyze you with pain. You would feel so much

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Speaker 1: pain you would be incapable of doing anything else. This

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Speaker 1: is the pain ray that people have talked about. And uh,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of concern in the International commu Unity

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Speaker 1: that such a device would be used not to stop

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Speaker 1: a riot, but rather as a divisive torture to h

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Speaker 1: to really torture a person if you were trying to

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Speaker 1: interrogate them. And of course the whole torture thing has

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Speaker 1: its own issues beyond just the technical but that is

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Speaker 1: a way that people are weaponizing plasma. It's just not

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Speaker 1: using plasma as a direct weapon. It's just part of

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Speaker 1: the weapon. And there are other ways as well. There

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Speaker 1: are ideas of creating plasma to act as an antenna

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Speaker 1: because they can be much more efficient than metal antennas,

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Speaker 1: and or even use them in anti missile systems, where

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Speaker 1: the idea would be that if you had missiles coming in,

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Speaker 1: you could fire beams up into the upper atmosphere ionized

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Speaker 1: part of the upper atmosphere so that when missiles were

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Speaker 1: passing through them, they would detonate and not land and

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Speaker 1: hit you. Um. So those are ways of weaponizing pla SMA.

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Speaker 1: That's not not quite the same as having a a

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Speaker 1: cool ray gun. You know, you're Q thirty five space

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Speaker 1: modulator or whatever it's called. I'm sure. I'm sure someone's

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Speaker 1: gonna write and so they know it was a Q

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Speaker 1: thirty two space modulator. Sorry, that was the obsolete person

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Speaker 1: I thought I've upgraded. Yeah, I'm It's also hard to

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Speaker 1: imagine something that shot plasma that would, you know, stop

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Speaker 1: at a certain person. So it would it would shoot

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Speaker 1: through schools, it would seem really it would, yeah, if

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Speaker 1: it if it were really a superheated gas um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you were to find some way to

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Speaker 1: control it so that it maintained its integrity and could

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Speaker 1: travel best just distances, then what would stop it from

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Speaker 1: shooting through whatever it was you hit and then going

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Speaker 1: moving on. I mean, it would lose energy every time

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Speaker 1: it contos. But if you're talking about superheated, if you're

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Speaker 1: talking about temperatures that rival the temperature of the sun, UM,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna take a while for that to to lose

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Speaker 1: enough energy for it to um. If you could keep

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Speaker 1: it concentrated like that, it would take a while for

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Speaker 1: it to lose enough energy for it to stop, which

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Speaker 1: just reminds me of the documentary Real Genius where they

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Speaker 1: fire off the laser and it goes all the way

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Speaker 1: through the entire laboratory and shoots through the head of

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Speaker 1: a statue on the quad. Yeah. So anyway, Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's the basis for the whole idea about plasma weapons.

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Speaker 1: I think I'm not going to go so far as

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Speaker 1: to say they're impossible. It's just that with today's technology

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Speaker 1: they are not really possible, and it may be that

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Speaker 1: they could be possible but not practical. Yeah, it'll it

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Speaker 1: may very well be that by the time we could

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Speaker 1: create a plasma weapon, something even scarier is out there.

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Speaker 1: So um, yeah, it'll be interesting to see if there's

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Speaker 1: there are further developments in attempting to weaponize plasma technology.

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Speaker 1: But really, when it comes down to it, it's very

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Speaker 1: useful tech for things in manufacturing and like I said,

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Speaker 1: waste management or potentially in waste management. There are very

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Speaker 1: few plasma waste converter facilities out there. There are only

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Speaker 1: only a couple in the United States, and there are

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Speaker 1: a few in Japan and uh, and that's about it.

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Speaker 1: But but they have the potential to really change the

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Speaker 1: way we deal with waste. I mean they could they

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Speaker 1: could actually help reduce landfills because most of them have

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Speaker 1: capacity so great that they would be able to serve

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Speaker 1: not just the community on a daily basis, but also

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Speaker 1: take uh garbage that has already been dumped in the

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Speaker 1: landfill and start using that as well. So every day

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Speaker 1: it would be using a little bit more of the

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Speaker 1: landfill as well as taking care of all the daily

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Speaker 1: trash that was generated by the population, plus possibly creating

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Speaker 1: energy as a result through uh, through using fuel. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's an attractive prospect, but it

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Speaker 1: also requires quite a bit of an initial investment. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: this was going to be a short episode, So hey guys, UH,

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Speaker 1: you're welcome, because a lot of ours have have topped

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Speaker 1: over forty five minutes and a few of them have

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Speaker 1: hit that one hour mark, so you guys are getting

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Speaker 1: off easy today. But that was a great topic. It

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Speaker 1: was very interesting for us to research. And uh, it's

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Speaker 1: plasma is just cool, not literally it's actually really super hot,

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Speaker 1: but I mean just checking it's neat. Yes, nifty if

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Speaker 1: you will. So, Guys, if you have any requests for

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Speaker 1: topics that you would like us to tackle, let us

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Speaker 1: know on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled. There is text

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Speaker 1: stuff H s W or send us an email our

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Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com and Chris and

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Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Brought to

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Speaker 1: you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready,

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Speaker 1: are you