Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey what everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Volkslam. And
Speaker 1: today we want to talk about a science fiction ee
Speaker 1: kind of thing. This is not our our promised Independence
Speaker 1: Day extravaganza. It seems that people are really into the
Speaker 1: idea of us kind of taking a movie and just
Speaker 1: deconstructing all the technical issues that we have with it.
Speaker 1: But we just want to talk about something else, some
Speaker 1: science fiction e kind of technology that maybe is not
Speaker 1: so practical. That's plasma weapons, right, And this is partially
Speaker 1: because I am still really bitter that I cannot end
Speaker 1: conversations that I don't like having by sticking a plasma
Speaker 1: grenade down someone's face and running away giggling. Is it
Speaker 1: a spider? Get it off? No, it's not spider, it's
Speaker 1: glowing blue. Is a blue spider? Get it off? It's
Speaker 1: for my red versus Blue fans out there. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: plasma weapons is one of those staples in science fiction.
Speaker 1: But before we kind of talk about what plasma weapons are,
Speaker 1: it helps for us to actually think about what plasma is. Yes,
Speaker 1: here in the reality world, that we live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the place where you and I spend all our time, well,
Speaker 1: well most of our time, not half and half of
Speaker 1: our time, Okay. In this world, plasma is one of
Speaker 1: the four phases of matter, the others being solid, liquid,
Speaker 1: and gas. And in fact, plasma is the most plentiful
Speaker 1: of all these stages of matter. Just not here on Earth, no,
Speaker 1: not not so much. But when you look at things
Speaker 1: like stars which are many, many, many times larger than Earth,
Speaker 1: that's what those are made out of. That's that's all plasma. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's ionized gas. Now that doesn't necessarily mean anything
Speaker 1: to you if you haven't had a science course in
Speaker 1: a really long time, or maybe you just haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to that one yet, since we have listeners of all
Speaker 1: ages up there. So an ionized gas means that those
Speaker 1: atoms that are in the gas are made up of
Speaker 1: neutral particles. Uh. Then you have ions, which are atoms
Speaker 1: that have either gained or lost electrons. In the case
Speaker 1: of plasma, we're talking about losing electrons, and then you've
Speaker 1: got electron zipping around. So the ions are positively charged,
Speaker 1: the electrons are negatively charged um, and it's all moving
Speaker 1: around in this high energy gas. That also means that
Speaker 1: electricity can actually flow through plasma. Plasma itself is a conductor. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're also affected by magnetic fields. Yeah, because whenever you
Speaker 1: have charges, then that means that it can respond to
Speaker 1: some sort of magnetic field. We've talked many, many times
Speaker 1: about the relationship between electric and magnetic fields. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is the case with plasma. So if you have a
Speaker 1: plasma and you have a strong magnetic field, you can
Speaker 1: actually guide that plasma in a way or or or
Speaker 1: immobilize it or compress it, which is really important in
Speaker 1: some of the applications. But we'll talk about the applications
Speaker 1: in a in just a minute. So, plasma stars make
Speaker 1: it through huge amounts of heat. I mean you have
Speaker 1: to you have to really take gas and add energy
Speaker 1: to it to turn gas into a plasma. And energy
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be heat. Uh. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: have florescent bulbs have have plasma in them, and they
Speaker 1: are obviously not that hot, so certainly not as hot
Speaker 1: as the surface of the sun or even an incandescent bulb.
Speaker 1: So how do we make plasma? So it does require
Speaker 1: that we add energy, uh, and like you said, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be heat. It can be in the
Speaker 1: form of electricity, which is what we see with fluorescent
Speaker 1: light bulbs. It's also what we see with things like
Speaker 1: plasma torches, and we'll explain more about how those working
Speaker 1: a little bit. But um, I want to read this
Speaker 1: out because I got a little silly when I was
Speaker 1: writing my notes. Already enjoyed. I enjoyed this note. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what was in my coffee when
Speaker 1: I started writing this one, but what I specifically wrote
Speaker 1: my notes was you make plasma by adding energy to
Speaker 1: a gas until electrons strip free of the atoms in
Speaker 1: the gas, and you've got ions and electrons having a
Speaker 1: sub atomic janet Reno dance party. So that's all my
Speaker 1: for all my Starday Night Live friends out there who
Speaker 1: watched in the nineties like I did. Yes, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's basically just the nuclei of these atoms and
Speaker 1: and the electrons all going we yeah, especially if it's
Speaker 1: something like hydrogen, because then all you have our protons,
Speaker 1: which are positively charged subotomic particles, and electrons, which are
Speaker 1: the negatively charged subatomic particles zipping around. Now, uh, plasma
Speaker 1: does not necessarily have to just be hydrogen gas. It
Speaker 1: can really be any gas if you add enough UH
Speaker 1: energy to it to turn it into a plasma. It's
Speaker 1: just hydrogen is the one we think of because that's
Speaker 1: what the Sun is made out of. Sun is actually
Speaker 1: using hydrogen gas. It's got this this plasma hydrogen that
Speaker 1: then fuses into helium. And that's the fusion process that
Speaker 1: we see in the Sun that we hope one day
Speaker 1: we can harness here on Earth or yes, harness, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not replicate. We already replicate it right inefficiently. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the amount of energy we have to pour into replicating
Speaker 1: it is more than what we get out of it.
Speaker 1: So therefore it's not a good energy source. But it's
Speaker 1: a pretty light show. We are hoping that we can
Speaker 1: make the energy source. And if you've listened to our
Speaker 1: fusion episode, you know what we're talking about. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: cover it a little bit more in a in a
Speaker 1: second too. So, yeah, we use UH an electric current
Speaker 1: apply to the gas to get that energy that's necessary
Speaker 1: to make the electrons pop off these these uh atoms,
Speaker 1: turning them into ions. So in the case with like
Speaker 1: a plasma torch, you've got these electrodes that create the
Speaker 1: negative charge when you bring that torch in contact with
Speaker 1: positively charged metal surface. So for example, a big old
Speaker 1: hunk of iron, you complete the right and then that
Speaker 1: allows the negative particles to move towards the positive particles.
Speaker 1: In the process, you're injecting the torch with compressed air.
Speaker 1: That compressed air comes into contact with this incredibly powerful
Speaker 1: electric charge, turns into a plasma, burns super super hot,
Speaker 1: and that's what allows you to cut through like a
Speaker 1: and uh. And that's just one example of how we
Speaker 1: use the the plasma here on our planet. Not all
Speaker 1: of them are so violent that one is actually kind
Speaker 1: of awesome. There are other uses for plasma torches. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about two. So when we're talking about a plasma
Speaker 1: like that, like in the case of a plasma torch,
Speaker 1: you're talking about creating a a ionized gas there's actually
Speaker 1: hotter than the surface of the sun in some cases.
Speaker 1: So how do you contain something like that very carefully? Right,
Speaker 1: because if you don't, you just burn everything up? Well? Actually, fortunately, uh,
Speaker 1: once once plasma gets away from its energy source, it
Speaker 1: cools down very rapidly. Yeah, because you have to keep
Speaker 1: pouring energy in to maintain that plasma state. You know
Speaker 1: with the sun, it's just it's got that heat going
Speaker 1: for it. That's what keeps it going. Here on Earth.
Speaker 1: We would have to continue either applying heat or electricity
Speaker 1: to maintain that plasma. If we didn't, it would start
Speaker 1: to lose energy, and as it lost energy, it would
Speaker 1: start to convert into a normal gas as opposed to
Speaker 1: a plasma um. And also if we wanted to maintain
Speaker 1: that that energy and keep the plasma going, we could
Speaker 1: control it with magnetic fields. Not the band which you know,
Speaker 1: I love Book of Love, great song, but that's not
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. We're talking about actual magnetic fields.
Speaker 1: You could use those like electro magnets. You could use
Speaker 1: electromagnets to control and contain plasma because as we said before,
Speaker 1: the electrical charge of the plasma reacts to the magnetic field. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you just create it so that you are
Speaker 1: repelling the plasma from all sides, you can contain it
Speaker 1: into a little ball of plasma if you if you will,
Speaker 1: or you know, various shapes. It's not really a ball necessarily,
Speaker 1: but that's something that you would have to do because
Speaker 1: otherwise it sort of blooms outward blooming is is one
Speaker 1: of those those terms that can be used in multiple
Speaker 1: ways depending upon what specific technology referring to. So with lasers,
Speaker 1: it's slight be different than with plasma. What I mean
Speaker 1: with plasma is that it does tend to to spread out.
Speaker 1: It kind of dissipates. So let's say that you decide
Speaker 1: that you're gonna hop into the shower, take a nice
Speaker 1: hot shower, and in the process you're generating a lot steam.
Speaker 1: That steam will just essentially go everywhere to fill up
Speaker 1: the volume of the room you are in, assuming that
Speaker 1: the room you are in is not palatial, and that
Speaker 1: the steam can eventually cool down enough to condense into water. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's the same short thing with plasma.
Speaker 1: It's gonna spread out. It behaves the way of gas.
Speaker 1: What it doesn't just uh maintain its shape. So that's
Speaker 1: why you would need something like a magnetic field to
Speaker 1: keep it in a specific shape if that was your goal.
Speaker 1: And again, if it were spreading out, then that would
Speaker 1: also mean to be losing energy fairly rapidly, and cooling
Speaker 1: down doesn't necessarily mean that you want to stand too
Speaker 1: close to a plasma torch as it's going off, But
Speaker 1: it does mean that it's not going to you know,
Speaker 1: when we talk about something that can burn hotter than
Speaker 1: the surface of the sun, we don't mean that if
Speaker 1: you turn it on and immediately starts to burn a
Speaker 1: hole straight down through the through the earth, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of feet away, it's gonna kind of cool
Speaker 1: down enough that it's nothing. Yeah, yeah, and at least
Speaker 1: not enough for it to cause massive problem, like a
Speaker 1: structural integrity problem. That being said that, if you do
Speaker 1: have a plasma furnace, you have to have lots of
Speaker 1: cooling mechanisms in place to keep that operational if you're
Speaker 1: going to maintain a plasma burn. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in a second. I like that we keep on
Speaker 1: hinting the stuff we're gonna talk about teasers. We're actually
Speaker 1: kind of getting into it right now, so don't worry.
Speaker 1: It's not like we're holding off that far. So we've
Speaker 1: already kind of talked a little bit about what we
Speaker 1: use plasma for. For instance, plasma torches. We talked about that,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned fluorescent lights, but how exactly do fluorescent
Speaker 1: lights work, Like what is the the plasma application there.
Speaker 1: What's what's happening inside of fluorescent Okay, so fluorescent bulbs
Speaker 1: are sealed tubes and they inject current into them through
Speaker 1: electrodes um. They're the tubes. The tubes are filled without
Speaker 1: with an inert gas, usually classical. They are gone and
Speaker 1: uh and a little bit of liquid mercury and um.
Speaker 1: So so when the current flow flows through these electrodes um,
Speaker 1: it causes the inert gas in the tube to plasma
Speaker 1: ify um. And I'm not sure if that's a real word.
Speaker 1: Is excellent it is right now anyway, it's real enough
Speaker 1: for me. We are the music makers of dreams. Um.
Speaker 1: And and when when that when that gas plasma I
Speaker 1: fis um. The electrons begin migrating through the tube due
Speaker 1: to this electric charge. Okay, um, this this energy makes
Speaker 1: liquid mercury gasify. And then those uh, those those little
Speaker 1: gasified mercury atoms um collide with the argon plasma and
Speaker 1: the the electrons in the in the mercury atoms start
Speaker 1: getting excited by these collisions and and jumping up a level.
Speaker 1: And now now that this this, this is basically how
Speaker 1: photons are formed. When um, when something flides with a
Speaker 1: particle and it gets those electrons excited, it jumps up
Speaker 1: a level, and then when it contracts back down to
Speaker 1: its former position, a photon is given off. Right, Because
Speaker 1: what's happening is you're pouring energy into the atom, which
Speaker 1: is allowing the electron to move to further out from
Speaker 1: the nucleus. When the electron starts coming back into the nucleus,
Speaker 1: that means it has to release that the energy that
Speaker 1: was used to push it out in the first place.
Speaker 1: That release tends to be in the form of a photon.
Speaker 1: So a light particle on the keys with mercury. Most
Speaker 1: of those light particles are actually ultra violet correct um,
Speaker 1: which which is invisible to the human eye. So it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a very useful light bulb if that's all
Speaker 1: it did, I mean, apart from you know, maybe you
Speaker 1: wanted to have a wicked black light kind of thing
Speaker 1: going on, right, And that is how black lights work. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the the inside of most flash bulbs that
Speaker 1: are not black lights are covered with them with a
Speaker 1: powdered phosphor coating, and um this, these these phosphor atoms
Speaker 1: get bombarded by the UV photons. Uh, go through one
Speaker 1: of those fancy electron jumps and in the process release
Speaker 1: a visible light photon. Right, So you're you're actually having
Speaker 1: two incidents of the same process going on within a
Speaker 1: fluoresce evolved. It's just one of them is what is
Speaker 1: giving us the light that we can see within the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum and uh and and the other is the
Speaker 1: more practical from a energy conversion and um. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean it's stuff like our goon gas is pretty
Speaker 1: common and inexpensive. By the way, the fact that there
Speaker 1: is mercury and floresce involves is one of those reasons
Speaker 1: why you want to be very careful with fluoresce involves,
Speaker 1: especially and lick them. Yeah, when you're disposing of fluoresce involves,
Speaker 1: you need to be very careful because mercury is very toxic.
Speaker 1: Uh and it can make you go crazy and not
Speaker 1: in a fun Las Vegas kind of way. Science fact. Yes,
Speaker 1: So so that's one way that we use plasma along
Speaker 1: with torches. Yeah. And and this this brings us actually
Speaker 1: to plasma TVs because plasma TVs are are essentially um made.
Speaker 1: A plasma display is made up of a bunch of
Speaker 1: very small colored fluorescent light right. Um. By altering the
Speaker 1: kind of phosphors that you're using in a florescent lights coating,
Speaker 1: you can alter the kind of visible light that comes
Speaker 1: out of it, right, so what color you actually receive?
Speaker 1: And uh? And these are are our gp uh green
Speaker 1: blue red green blue lights. Right. So uh And here's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. So one of the things that you
Speaker 1: know people who are home theater enthusiasts, and you know
Speaker 1: they either subscribe to l E D, l c D
Speaker 1: or plasma TVs. Uh. One of the things they talk
Speaker 1: about is contrast ratio, which is the difference between the
Speaker 1: whites that you can display on a screen versus the
Speaker 1: the shades of black that you can display on a screen.
Speaker 1: And if you have a true black, that means that
Speaker 1: if you were to turn off all the lights in
Speaker 1: your room and look at your TV, it should just disappear.
Speaker 1: It should not even be noticedab glowing. Right. If you
Speaker 1: have an l c D television, chances are is that
Speaker 1: if you have all the lights off and you have
Speaker 1: a black screen on your TV and the TV is on,
Speaker 1: you can actually see more like a re really deep
Speaker 1: gray color. And it's because it has a back light,
Speaker 1: whereas plasma televisions do not have that backlight. It's just
Speaker 1: relying upon that excitation of the gas. Yeah. There, it's
Speaker 1: just all of these little pixels of of red grit
Speaker 1: and blue light that are that are very small and uh,
Speaker 1: contributing to a larger picture. Right. So when it's when
Speaker 1: the screen is black, it's because there's nothing active. It's
Speaker 1: not that you know, there's like a little tiny shield
Speaker 1: between the back light and you, which is technically what's
Speaker 1: going on with most l c d s. The shield
Speaker 1: is very tiny, but it is what it is, uh.
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of other like differences between
Speaker 1: plasma and l c d s, especially early early on.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you really want to experience the joy
Speaker 1: of learning about the differences, you can listen to one
Speaker 1: of the very first episodes of tech Stuff. We're talking
Speaker 1: like back, I think when it was five minutes. You
Speaker 1: would have to go to our RSS feed to find it.
Speaker 1: But if you went to our RSS feed and scrolled
Speaker 1: all the way down and then looked a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes up from the very first one, you would see
Speaker 1: that Chris and I did an episode all about the
Speaker 1: difference differences between plasma TVs and l c ds. But
Speaker 1: in this case, plasma is um you know, one of
Speaker 1: the exactly what we're talking about, this ionized gas. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, both with four essence and with the
Speaker 1: plasma TVs, these are not gases that are burning at
Speaker 1: hotter than the surfaces right now. No, they're not. However,
Speaker 1: our next application will be Okay, well, are you talking
Speaker 1: about plasma waste converters? Um? I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about plasma torches, but we can also talk about plasma
Speaker 1: wast converters, right because we kind of talked about plasma
Speaker 1: torches already, did we did? I? I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that they they've actually been around since World War Two,
Speaker 1: when when factories working on military aircraft started adopting welding
Speaker 1: techniques that they that they realized were um uh, we're
Speaker 1: much more efficient because they um when when you're feeding
Speaker 1: that inert gas through through the electrical arc um, it
Speaker 1: creates a barrier around the world with the with with
Speaker 1: the airflow and um that that protects it from oxidation,
Speaker 1: which is very use well when you're trying to make
Speaker 1: things stick together like metal, right, especially if it's metal
Speaker 1: that's going to be under tremendous stress, like poor conditions,
Speaker 1: you know, like like having salty water being tossed at it. Sure, Sure,
Speaker 1: but plasma waste converters are a little different. It's using
Speaker 1: the same technology as plasma torches in the sense that
Speaker 1: you have a plasma torch at the heart of the
Speaker 1: plasma waste converter. And anyone who's listened to tech stuff
Speaker 1: long enough knows that I'm crazy about this idea because
Speaker 1: I just think it's so cool. The idea is that
Speaker 1: you are using plasma in the case, in the sense
Speaker 1: of a plasma torch to break down the molecular bonds
Speaker 1: of garbage. So you bring garbage in and the garbage
Speaker 1: gets exposed to a plasma torch within a furnace. The
Speaker 1: furnace itself is lined with lots of protective material to
Speaker 1: keep it at a workable temperature, so it doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: break down. But the garbage itself, when it's exposed to
Speaker 1: this intense heat, the molecules that hold it together, that
Speaker 1: those bonds that hold the molecules together rather they break
Speaker 1: and it turns. It's called molecular dissociation. Yeah, I've dissociated
Speaker 1: with some molecules in my time, and let me tell you,
Speaker 1: it's a violent process. And so In this case, what
Speaker 1: happens is the material breaks down into one of two forms.
Speaker 1: Either if it's carbon based, it then turns into gas,
Speaker 1: or if it is not combon based, if it's not organic,
Speaker 1: it then melts down into slag. And usually before you
Speaker 1: would even go through this process, you would actually sort
Speaker 1: through this garbage, you know, take out anything that's metal
Speaker 1: that you could recycle that kind of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: what you what you're left with is a gas that
Speaker 1: if you treat it chemically, you could actually make a
Speaker 1: synthetic fuel out of it, which is one of those
Speaker 1: promising future fuels that people talk about sometimes, right, And
Speaker 1: it's not that this is a fuel that would it's
Speaker 1: not that we would create enough of this to make
Speaker 1: it our primary source of fuel, but it could help
Speaker 1: offset some of our gasoline. Yeah, and or even if
Speaker 1: you just had it on site, if you had energy
Speaker 1: production on site along with plasma waste converter, then you
Speaker 1: could actually generate electricity. Yeah, you can fuel a converter,
Speaker 1: and if you made enough electricity from the fuel, then
Speaker 1: it all depends on what the garbage is made out of.
Speaker 1: But if you made enough, you could even feed electricity
Speaker 1: back into the pad so, but then the other stuff,
Speaker 1: the slag just melts off and it if you let
Speaker 1: it cool by air, it becomes uh, this rocky substance
Speaker 1: looks like volcanic glass, and you can use that in
Speaker 1: construction materials. If you cool it with compressed air, it
Speaker 1: turns into what's called rock wool, which is very uh
Speaker 1: effective insulator. Uh. If you cool it by water, it
Speaker 1: turns into this little pebbly kind of substance that you
Speaker 1: can use for multiple purposes. It's just a neat idea,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it comes at several different problems
Speaker 1: all at once. Energy production, although on a very small scale. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not like this is going to it's not like
Speaker 1: it's gonna be Mr fusion, right, it's not gonna power
Speaker 1: in your car um but energy production as well as
Speaker 1: getting rid of garbage in a way that it would
Speaker 1: mean that we turn our garbage into fuel sources and
Speaker 1: eventually we could even if the if the facilities were
Speaker 1: large enough, get rid of landfills, we would eventually mind
Speaker 1: the landfills from fuel plus taken all incoming garbage now.
Speaker 1: And this is in a relatively clean way, by the way,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't use oxidation. In the burning process, You're
Speaker 1: not you're not actually burning stuff. You're applying so much
Speaker 1: energy that it just breaks it down. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: different from burning garbage and then releasing toxins into the air.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind that the gases that you are getting
Speaker 1: from this process would be pretty toxic in some cases.
Speaker 1: But that's why you have to have the chemical scrubbing
Speaker 1: part where you use uh special You cool the gas
Speaker 1: down in several in several steps, and once it's cool enough,
Speaker 1: you then combine it with other gases that will allow
Speaker 1: the useful stuff to pass through and become synthetic fuel,
Speaker 1: and the other stuff, the toxic stuff would mind with
Speaker 1: other agents to become essentially inert material that you could
Speaker 1: then dispose of safely. At least that's the ideal. Um.
Speaker 1: All I've being said really expensive proposition, which is why
Speaker 1: we don't see it everywhere, right right, But but pretty
Speaker 1: cool though, um and uh and and this is possibly
Speaker 1: why people in science fiction decide that, hey, you know
Speaker 1: this thing where we're literally breaking down the molecular structure
Speaker 1: of atoms, Yeah, why don't we use that as a weapon? Weapad?
Speaker 1: I mean, if this is if this is something that
Speaker 1: can turn stuff into just gas or molten slag. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that make an amazing weapon? And in theory, sure, and
Speaker 1: that's probably one of the reasons why it's so popular
Speaker 1: in science fiction. But we'll we'll take a closer look
Speaker 1: at that before we get into the science fiction e
Speaker 1: part and the actual weapon part. Let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: all right, So we touched on it why you would
Speaker 1: want a plasma weapon because plasma is the stuff of stars,
Speaker 1: and if you were able to wield that in a
Speaker 1: weaponized way, you would be the biggest, baddest monster in
Speaker 1: the universe. You were looking at me to see how
Speaker 1: it was going to end that, weren't you, Because you're thinking, like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of words that he could use
Speaker 1: to in that phrase, and some of them would require
Speaker 1: a beap, but I was good. So yeah. It's it's
Speaker 1: this idea of transmitting huge amounts of thermal energy or heat.
Speaker 1: So if you think of our traditional guns, the stuff
Speaker 1: that we have right now today, most of those guns
Speaker 1: are weapons that transfer kinetic energy. The idea that I
Speaker 1: fire a projectile at a target, that projectile transmits kinetic
Speaker 1: energy to the target and that causes damage um. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, not all guns are that way. We've got
Speaker 1: some guns that use different methods, like you know, things
Speaker 1: that even use things like sonic waves. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit a little sonic wave, still kinetic. But then you
Speaker 1: could have a weaponized laser that would be sort of
Speaker 1: a thermal weapon. Yea more burning, that's true. So the
Speaker 1: idea I think is that a plasma weapon would be uh,
Speaker 1: something that would cause damage to your target through massive
Speaker 1: amounts of heat, kind of the way we were talking
Speaker 1: about with the plast and massive amounts of damage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't just be like it lights up very pretty,
Speaker 1: although that's kind of the effect we get with science fiction.
Speaker 1: So yeah, why are why do we see them and
Speaker 1: so many different uh implementations in science fiction? I really
Speaker 1: do think it is because they look cool, and they
Speaker 1: look cool, and they make noises or whiter or brown noises.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not pupew laser. It's different from pupe laser.
Speaker 1: But for example, we've mentioned this before. Lauren and I
Speaker 1: both are fans of the Halo franchise, and in Halo,
Speaker 1: the the alien bad guys, they tend to use plasma weapons.
Speaker 1: I think, in fact, all of their According to the
Speaker 1: Halo wiki anyway, um not not all of the weather
Speaker 1: there that the needlers the one kind of weapon under contention,
Speaker 1: but everything else that the Covenant uses is u is
Speaker 1: a plasma weapon, because they talk about plasma rifles. They
Speaker 1: talk about plasma pistols. If you want to, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want a new combo somebody, you've got to have
Speaker 1: a plasma pistol and then a human pistol and then
Speaker 1: you charge the plasma pistol really good for taking shields down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and that's that's the real purpose of it in
Speaker 1: the game, right, Some weapons are very good at doing
Speaker 1: particular things, Like the kinetic weapons are good at hurting
Speaker 1: people once their shields are down, but they're not so
Speaker 1: good at taking down shields, whereas the plasma weapons are
Speaker 1: really good at taking the shields down. And if you're me,
Speaker 1: they you could shoot somebody a billion times with a
Speaker 1: plasma weapon and they never seem to die, whereas I
Speaker 1: can take a hit and a half and I'm done. Right.
Speaker 1: Also that I'm really bad at Halo. Let's be fair,
Speaker 1: I'm probably not hitting them at all. I think I'm
Speaker 1: hitting them, but in reality, I'm just kind of spinning around,
Speaker 1: pointing my gun in the air and going within within
Speaker 1: the Halo universe, by the way, And I find I
Speaker 1: found this interesting just because I'm such a Halo nerd um. Uh.
Speaker 1: Supposedly humanity had tried to create a plasma tank at
Speaker 1: some point, because you know, because we were in this
Speaker 1: hypothetical future using um using plasma for garbage disposal and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and uh, but it never came to fruition, right,
Speaker 1: and whereas the Covenant certainly did, as the Wraith, as
Speaker 1: I recall, does fire uh giant blobs of plasma. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is that in the within the Halo
Speaker 1: universe that these plasma projectiles behave in a very particular way.
Speaker 1: They seem to go straight out from the weapon. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't bend to gravity in any way. They do not.
Speaker 1: So it's almost more like a laser in that sense.
Speaker 1: It's like an energy weapon in that sense, but it's
Speaker 1: an energy weapon where it is a cohesive blob, and
Speaker 1: in a very slow cohesive blob compared to, for example,
Speaker 1: the airspace of a of a swallow no no bullet
Speaker 1: or right, yeah, yeah, the the physical projectiles, like if
Speaker 1: you're using a pistol. It's not like you can track
Speaker 1: the motion of the bullet in Halo, right, You just
Speaker 1: you see whether or not you hit something by the reaction.
Speaker 1: See a sniper trail. But yeah, yeah, you can see
Speaker 1: a trail, but you can't see the bullet itself. You know,
Speaker 1: you see the evidence of where the bullet was, whereas
Speaker 1: with the plasma weapon, you can actually track the projectile
Speaker 1: as it fires across the field of battle. So, and
Speaker 1: also I wanted to mention that star Chreck a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of the plasma cannons, bombs, bullets, torpedoes, beams,
Speaker 1: um as, some forms of phasers are are also supposedly
Speaker 1: plasma based. Interesting. Yeah, I think it's just mainly because
Speaker 1: it sounds scientific and interesting. And again they you know,
Speaker 1: when you know that a plasma is an ionized gas
Speaker 1: and can be a superheated gas, then that tells you, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you could have this blob of stuff. But it starts
Speaker 1: to raise some pretty tough questions like could we have
Speaker 1: a science fiction e plasma weapon? And if not, what,
Speaker 1: what's the problem? Where where are we hitting the challenge
Speaker 1: of doing this? And there's a few physics really is
Speaker 1: the problem it's a big one. So one of those challenges.
Speaker 1: We kind of hinted at it already when I was
Speaker 1: talking about taking a shower. So imagine you're taking that
Speaker 1: shower and you want the steam to all go into
Speaker 1: one place in the room and stay there. Really hard.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? Um? Yeah, it's some people
Speaker 1: have pointed out, like, think about if you had a
Speaker 1: gun that could fire steam. Sure, if you were just
Speaker 1: right there, right where the barrel of the gun is ended,
Speaker 1: and you've ever gotten a steam burn, it's it's bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad. You know, if you're at point blank range
Speaker 1: for a steam gun, that would be bad business. It
Speaker 1: would hurt a lot. So same thing with like a
Speaker 1: plasma torch, except it wouldn't hurt so much as you
Speaker 1: would start to dissociate. Um but uh, but if you
Speaker 1: get more than a few feet away, Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: get more than a few feet away, it all disperses it.
Speaker 1: It has this blooming problem again that it just starts
Speaker 1: to that there's nothing holding the plasma into a shape
Speaker 1: like a projectile so that it could maintain some sort
Speaker 1: of coherence until it hit a target. So if I
Speaker 1: shoot a steam gun at Lauren and she's fifteen feet away.
Speaker 1: She's just gonna sit there and say like, nice smoke
Speaker 1: machine you got there, idiot, Whereas I'm thinking like, uh, shoot,
Speaker 1: should have got the other weapon, like the crossbow or something.
Speaker 1: This isn't terrible. It's a portrait. You might get a
Speaker 1: little damp. Sure, So so this is basically uh, Doctor
Speaker 1: Horrible's friend moist. I think this is pretty much so. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: with plasma, you're talking about a super high energy gas,
Speaker 1: and it's not that it would lose its energy instantaneously,
Speaker 1: but it would be you know, it disperses pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: So another thing is that plasma tends to be less
Speaker 1: dense than atmosphere, especially if it's like a hydrogen gas.
Speaker 1: I mean that's not Hydrogen is the lightest of all elements, right,
Speaker 1: So if you were to fire out a blob of hydrogen,
Speaker 1: the first thing it would do is float up into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, assuming that you are firing in an atmosphere
Speaker 1: and you're not in space. So if I, if if
Speaker 1: I'm shooting at you in our own real world Halo,
Speaker 1: and I have a hydrogen based plasma weapon, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna see my projectile shoot straight up as it's dispersing,
Speaker 1: so it's just getting it's a blob that's getting larger
Speaker 1: and grow and floating up. Meanwhile you're just giggling, and
Speaker 1: I'm still still shaking my hand unloading your sniper rifle
Speaker 1: at me um But luckily I serpentine. So anyway, the
Speaker 1: the this is a problem. You would have to have
Speaker 1: a super dense plasma so that it would not just
Speaker 1: float straight up. But that means that it would behave
Speaker 1: according to the rules of gravity. So just like an
Speaker 1: actual projectile, if you fire a gun with a physical
Speaker 1: bullet and you have a you know, you have plenty
Speaker 1: of space that that bullet will hit the ground if
Speaker 1: there's nothing to interrupt its flight. It's going to hit
Speaker 1: the ground in the same amount of time, by the way,
Speaker 1: as it would take you to drop the bullet from
Speaker 1: the height of the gun. So if I dropped if
Speaker 1: I dropped a bullet straight down, and I had a
Speaker 1: gun that is parallel to the ground, right, it's not
Speaker 1: pointed up in any way, it's not arcing. Uh, And
Speaker 1: and I fired the gun and I dropped the bullet
Speaker 1: at the same time, both bullets will hit the ground
Speaker 1: at the same time. It's just the bullet that's fired
Speaker 1: from the gun will hit the ground really far away.
Speaker 1: But that's because gravity. So gravity would would also effect
Speaker 1: plasma because you would have to have it super dense
Speaker 1: enough so it doesn't flow in the air. But that
Speaker 1: means that down. So there's that issue. And then how
Speaker 1: do you keep the plasma together? How do you keep
Speaker 1: it so that it's a projectile. The only way I
Speaker 1: can think of is that you use some sort of
Speaker 1: traveling magnetic field that keeps it in that shape. So
Speaker 1: you would have to have something that could create a
Speaker 1: magnetic field around your plasma and travel with the plasma
Speaker 1: projectile until it gets to its target. We don't really
Speaker 1: have anything that can do that, and if we did,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that a plasma weapon would necessarily be
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing that we would do with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we might be able to find other ways of weaponizing
Speaker 1: just that. The fact that we can make a traveling
Speaker 1: magnetic wave that we could control in so precise a
Speaker 1: manner as to maintain the shape of a plasma ball,
Speaker 1: you probably can weaponize that in a much more effective way. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Halo, the plasma sword is is said to be
Speaker 1: controlled by by a magnetic field genera that whole the
Speaker 1: blades of of ionized gas in that shape. Some people
Speaker 1: have theorized that a lightsaber is in fact some sort
Speaker 1: of plasma sword um, Whereas I just say what Lucas said,
Speaker 1: that it's a magic sword. So with magic, you don't
Speaker 1: have to have a scientific explanation. You don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just magic. But anyway, so yeah, you'd have to find
Speaker 1: some way of keeping that together. That's challenge number one.
Speaker 1: So we are nowhere near the point where we would
Speaker 1: be able to generate a plasma of the sufficient density
Speaker 1: and then keep it in the right shape and have
Speaker 1: it act as a projectile. We just don't have that here,
Speaker 1: So that's first challenge. Second challenge propelling the plasma. How
Speaker 1: do you get it to go out of the gun
Speaker 1: towards your target and maintain any sort of speed? Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe again, another magnetic field. Possibly you
Speaker 1: could use a a very strong magnetic feel to to
Speaker 1: repel the plasma towards your target. Doesn't seem like it
Speaker 1: would be terribly accurate. It's almost like just shoving someone
Speaker 1: and also also still not I mean, if you can,
Speaker 1: if you can really direct that sort of Bagnac field
Speaker 1: you get back into the territory of win. Why we
Speaker 1: just weaponizing that? Yeah? Or you if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a plasma where you are generating the plasma by pushing
Speaker 1: compressed air past electrodes, as opposed to already having generated
Speaker 1: plasma and then firing that. If you're making the plasma
Speaker 1: on site like you would with a plasma torch, then uh,
Speaker 1: I guess you could have it be kind of like
Speaker 1: a plasma flamethrower that's as cloth or maybe as doing
Speaker 1: a quick puff or a vortex of air. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen those air cannon that kind of had the
Speaker 1: elastic back? And then you know, I leaned back from
Speaker 1: the microphone to visually display that for all of our listeners.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that because it told me that you actually
Speaker 1: understand what it is that you immediately knew what I
Speaker 1: was talking about, because you were making the universal gesture
Speaker 1: of this jerk is about to hit me with an
Speaker 1: air cannon. Um, if you guys don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, they're these air cannons. They're sold as novelties.
Speaker 1: You didn't find them all over the place. I think
Speaker 1: think geek has them. But you can use them to
Speaker 1: fire a puff of air at a person all the
Speaker 1: way across a room, and that air will maintain its
Speaker 1: shaped by creating this vortex, the swirling uh motion of
Speaker 1: air that allows it to kind of be a projectile
Speaker 1: over decent distances. It does eventually disperse. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's going to maintain that indefinitely. But you maybe your
Speaker 1: plasma weapon would create a vortex similar to that and
Speaker 1: be able to be propelled through a quick puff. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's still kind of an issue there. That's
Speaker 1: how do you do that? If if you were able
Speaker 1: to generate enough kinetic energy through uh the magnetic field,
Speaker 1: like you said, why not just make a kinetic weapon
Speaker 1: rather than a plasma weapon, um, and then finally have
Speaker 1: the energy that would be required to make a plasma
Speaker 1: weapon work, right, because yeah, it's you would really need.
Speaker 1: You would need so much that it really wouldn't be mobile, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: First of all, just to generate a super hot plasma,
Speaker 1: you would need quite a bit of electricity, and you
Speaker 1: need a sustainable amount, So yeah, you wouldn't. Any battery
Speaker 1: that we have that's portable right now would not work.
Speaker 1: So we'd have to have incredible, like maybe like a
Speaker 1: little fusion generator and whatever the weapon is. And uh,
Speaker 1: and then you're talking about carrying around a fusion mom
Speaker 1: in pistol form. Otherwise you are essentially connected to an
Speaker 1: enormous power facility by a cable which is not terribly mobile. No, ums,
Speaker 1: certainly not fair personalized weapon. Yeah, And and it's beyond
Speaker 1: just the generating of the plasma, right if we also
Speaker 1: have to have this magnetic field, that energy has to
Speaker 1: come from somewhere. And if we're talking about propelling this
Speaker 1: plasma in any sort of way that actually makes it
Speaker 1: a you know, something that's more deadly than the moona
Speaker 1: nights laser beam, which moves it like one click a second,
Speaker 1: then you have to find even more energy to make
Speaker 1: that go forward. At this point, we're talking about so
Speaker 1: much energy to go into firing one single weapon that again,
Speaker 1: you could probably use that same amount of energy weaponize
Speaker 1: it in a different way that's far more effective. So
Speaker 1: what we're coming down to is right now, a plasma
Speaker 1: weapons not truly in the sense of the science fiction
Speaker 1: plasma weapons. A plasma weapons not really feasible. It's not
Speaker 1: not possible with the technology we have, and it's not
Speaker 1: really practical because again, with that amount of energy we
Speaker 1: would need, we could probably find more efficient ways of
Speaker 1: killing each other, all all kinds of more efficient ways,
Speaker 1: like any of the ones that exist right now, right yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, it's just it's probably not a very
Speaker 1: likely outcome. I don't think we're ever going to see
Speaker 1: plasma weapons the way they are depicted in video games
Speaker 1: and movies. However, that being said, once, once we are
Speaker 1: all carrying around, say Mr. Fusion maybe, but even then, like,
Speaker 1: why not just use a laser gun at that point, right,
Speaker 1: Other than the fact that you want the cool blobby effect,
Speaker 1: I mean points for style, I guess you can just
Speaker 1: use a laser gun and Saylor Yeah, yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: I would do it. So that makes that there are
Speaker 1: weapons that exist, either in prototype stage or very early
Speaker 1: stages now that do have plasma as a component. But
Speaker 1: it's not like you're firing a projectile of plasma. And
Speaker 1: one of those is something that we commonly refer to
Speaker 1: as a lightning gun. Uh. It's because because lightning in
Speaker 1: fact does plasma ify air around it, right, So in
Speaker 1: this case, what you're doing is it's it's pretty ingenious
Speaker 1: you're using a very high powered but very brief laser.
Speaker 1: It's only on for a fraction of a fraction of
Speaker 1: a fraction of a second. We're talking about fimpto seconds here.
Speaker 1: So you you you blast out this this high energy laser,
Speaker 1: that high energy laser. As it travels to whatever its
Speaker 1: target destination is, it creates a plasma channel because it's
Speaker 1: so high energy, that's just plasma ifying the atmosphere between
Speaker 1: it and wherever the target is. So you've got this
Speaker 1: plasma channel. That means that if you wanted to, you
Speaker 1: could fire off a blast of electricity, a huge electric
Speaker 1: charge down this channel. And because plasma does conduct electricity,
Speaker 1: lightning essentially will travel down this plasma channel target, assuming
Speaker 1: that your target does in fact conduct electricity. So there's
Speaker 1: no like like, here's the thing. It's not terribly accurate
Speaker 1: in the sense that if I'm aiming at Lauren and
Speaker 1: she happens to be no, I don't know two yards
Speaker 1: away because these things, I mean, a laser has no
Speaker 1: effective real range on it as as far as you know, No,
Speaker 1: that's too far out. Um really kind of line of
Speaker 1: site is really what theoretically this would work as so
Speaker 1: I've aimed at Lauren. I've pulled the trigger, and this
Speaker 1: this channel has opened up, and the electric blast immediately follows,
Speaker 1: like almost to the point where it's all to us.
Speaker 1: It would seem instantaneous, But Lauren happens to be there's
Speaker 1: a clear line of side. I can see her, and
Speaker 1: I'm firing this at her because apparently she's really cheesed
Speaker 1: me off. But there happens to be an enormous tank
Speaker 1: that's sitting yards between the two of us. Um, it's
Speaker 1: off to the side, so it's not like directly in
Speaker 1: my line of fire. However, this enormous tank is a conductor,
Speaker 1: and there is a very good chance that the lightning
Speaker 1: that's going down is going to zap onto that tank,
Speaker 1: as opposed to continuing down and zapping Lauren the same
Speaker 1: way that For example, UM, if you're if you're standing
Speaker 1: next to a very large tree. Um, you know that
Speaker 1: that that tree versus an open plane. If if you're
Speaker 1: in an open plane, you don't want to be the
Speaker 1: tallest thing in it. If if you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of a lightning storm, because and if there's a lightning
Speaker 1: storm and there's an open plane and a very tall tree.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be under the tree because again
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be that. You know, you can't predict
Speaker 1: exactly where this is going to go. It's a somewhat
Speaker 1: of a chaotic event now, but but the largest conductor
Speaker 1: nearby is a pretty good guess, right. So if Lauren's
Speaker 1: the largest conductor nearby, first of all, there aren't any
Speaker 1: other people around, which is tiny, but uh, then she
Speaker 1: might actually get hit by this lightning blast. Now, to
Speaker 1: be fair, or the applications that I have seen for
Speaker 1: this weapon are not meant to go against human targets
Speaker 1: or even vehicular targets, although that has been uh something
Speaker 1: that's been proposed. Instead, it's a means of detonating what
Speaker 1: is a suspected explosive device. So the idea is that
Speaker 1: you get a safe distance away from the device, you
Speaker 1: aim this thing at it, and then this blast of
Speaker 1: electricity hits the device and would then uh activate it
Speaker 1: or or destroy it, so that you wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about endangering someone's life. You wouldn't have to try
Speaker 1: and deactivate it in person, or you wouldn't even have
Speaker 1: to send a robot to it. You just blast it
Speaker 1: from a distance, So that's the proposed use of it.
Speaker 1: It's really kind of again not as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, it's not something that's widely deployed. It's still
Speaker 1: very much in that sort of testing, testing and waiting
Speaker 1: for for money kind of thing where it may even
Speaker 1: be perfectly viable. It's just that you have to get
Speaker 1: to the point where it funds and then it actually
Speaker 1: gets into the hands of the people who want to
Speaker 1: use is it. Then there's something called the pulsed energy
Speaker 1: projectile weapon or PEPs PEPs. Yeah, these are often referred
Speaker 1: to as non lethal weapons, and in fact, Chris and
Speaker 1: I did an episode on non lethal weapons. If you
Speaker 1: haven't heard that one, you should go back and listen
Speaker 1: to it. That we do cover PEPs in that one
Speaker 1: less more than five minutes. Yeah, this one, this one
Speaker 1: is one of the longer ones because it was a
Speaker 1: couple It was like maybe a year or two ago
Speaker 1: when we did it. So U these PEPs are they're
Speaker 1: classified as non lethal, but they can be quite lethal.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that you use a laser. Again,
Speaker 1: you point the laser at your target, and the laser
Speaker 1: is very high powered and it ends up vaporizing part
Speaker 1: of whatever the target is, whatever it comes into contact with.
Speaker 1: In the process, that area, then plasma fis turns into
Speaker 1: a very rapidly expanding pocket of plasma. That expansion is
Speaker 1: super super fast, and during that expansion you get a
Speaker 1: couple of things that happen. If it's faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of sound, then you actually get a shock wave
Speaker 1: like you would like a sonic boom. You know, it
Speaker 1: might not be on the scale of a jet flying overhead,
Speaker 1: but it could still happen. That would be enough to
Speaker 1: really knock your silly. But then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you get an electro magnetic pulse as well, which could
Speaker 1: be enough to overload your nervous system, right right, It's
Speaker 1: it's really not the not the heat of the plasma
Speaker 1: that that you're worrying about in this case, it's the
Speaker 1: sensory overload. Yeah. So you would essentially end up feeling
Speaker 1: a massive amount of pain and possibly be paralyzed for
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time. Yeah. So it's it's meant
Speaker 1: to incapacitate the target, and in fact has been referenced
Speaker 1: as being a weapon that would be used in something
Speaker 1: like riot control. Kind of terrifying. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I mean, for reals, set your phasers to stun kind
Speaker 1: of kind of weapon is really nifty and Star Trek
Speaker 1: when everyone is a good guy, um, and they're only
Speaker 1: using it on bad guys. But here in the real
Speaker 1: world is a little bit a little bit, especially since
Speaker 1: since it is said to cause tremendous pain. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's something that just you don't just don't
Speaker 1: just go, you know, it's more like, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you can't do anything. Um. So yeah, it's but those
Speaker 1: are two examples of existing weapons that are using plasma
Speaker 1: in some way. It's just not in the way that
Speaker 1: we think of when we think plasma gun. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that plasma is completely useless in the in
Speaker 1: the weapons field. It's just that it's not directly used
Speaker 1: as a projectile the way we think of when we
Speaker 1: play Halo. There is UM. I did read about about
Speaker 1: something called a plasma shield. Have you heard about this one? No? Um,
Speaker 1: It's it's a device that's using a dynamic pulse detonation
Speaker 1: and um and it's basically a short but intense laser
Speaker 1: pulse creates a ball of plasma and then a second
Speaker 1: laser pulse generates a shock wave the way that we
Speaker 1: were talking about a moment ago. With the PEPs um,
Speaker 1: it creates a shock wave within the plasma that generates
Speaker 1: a flash bang. Wow, that would sounds like that would
Speaker 1: be terrifying. Yes, yeah, and loud and and very loud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and that this this also, you know, being
Speaker 1: being more defensive than offensive. It's meant to disorient. It's
Speaker 1: meant to disorient and to distract and to allow your
Speaker 1: forces to either withdraw or to engage in a way
Speaker 1: that the opposing forces cannot anticipate because they're currently dealing
Speaker 1: with the fact that their ears don't work anymore. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's scary, scary stuff. And I mean, anytime we talk
Speaker 1: about weapons, obviously it's gonna be But but I hope
Speaker 1: that that kind of that was This was a fun
Speaker 1: one to take another science fiction topic and really look
Speaker 1: at and say, how could we make this possible? And
Speaker 1: would it even be worthwhile? I think I think the
Speaker 1: consensus is it wouldn't be worthwhile in the sense of
Speaker 1: a plasma projectile. But there are other ways you can
Speaker 1: use plasma that are both uh beneficial as in uh
Speaker 1: they do useful work for us and also scary and
Speaker 1: that they can make you fall over and go out.
Speaker 1: Useful and terrifying. Yeah, just like we are. We're useful
Speaker 1: and terrifying. Yea yay. So guys, if you have a
Speaker 1: suggestions for future useful yet terrifying episodes of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: you should write in and let us know our email addresses.
Speaker 1: Tech stuff at Discovery dot com or find us on
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Speaker 1: tech stuff. H. S. W and Lauren and I will
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