Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, an executive producer with I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all Things tech. It is time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. The episode you are about to
Speaker 1: hear originally published on July one, two thousand thirteen. It
Speaker 1: is titled Pew Pew Plasma. So this is an episode
Speaker 1: all about plasma, what it is, what we use it for,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe some sci fi stuff about plasma. We're
Speaker 1: gonna check it out. Let's listen. In So, plasma weapons
Speaker 1: is one of those staples in science fiction. But before
Speaker 1: we kind of talk about what plasma weapons are, it
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: well most of our time, a little bit, not a
Speaker 1: half and half of our time, Okay. In this world,
Speaker 1: plasma is one of the four phases of matter, the
Speaker 1: others being solid, liquid, and gas. And in fact, plasma
Speaker 1: is the most plentiful of all these stages of matter,
Speaker 1: just not here on Earth, no, not not so much.
Speaker 1: But when you look at things like stars which are
Speaker 1: many many, many times larger than Earth. That's what those
Speaker 1: are made out of. That's that's all plasma. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's ionized gas. Now that doesn't necessarily mean anything to
Speaker 1: you if you haven't had a science course in a
Speaker 1: really long time, or maybe you just haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: that one yet, since we have listeners of all ages
Speaker 1: up there. So an ionized gas means that those atoms
Speaker 1: that are in the gas are made up of neutral particles.
Speaker 1: Then you have ions, which are atoms that have either
Speaker 1: gained or lost electrons. In the case of plasma, we're
Speaker 1: talking about losing electrons, and then you've got electrons zipping around.
Speaker 1: So the ions are positively charged, the electrons are negatively charged, um,
Speaker 1: and it's all moving around in this high energy gas.
Speaker 1: That also means that electricity can actually flow through plasma.
Speaker 1: Plasma itself is a conductor. Yes, they're also affected by
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. Yeah, because whenever you have charges, then that
Speaker 1: means that it can respond to some sort of magnetic field.
Speaker 1: We've talked many, many times about the relationship between electric
Speaker 1: and magnetic fields. This is the case with plasma. So
Speaker 1: if you have a plasma and you have a strong
Speaker 1: magnetic field, you can actually guide that plasma in a
Speaker 1: way or or or mobilize it or compress it, which
Speaker 1: is really important in some of the applications. But we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the applications in in just a minute. So
Speaker 1: plasma stars make it through huge amounts of heat. I
Speaker 1: mean you have to. You have to really take gas
Speaker 1: and add energy to it to turn gas into a plasma.
Speaker 1: That energy doesn't have to be heat. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: a fluorescent 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 son or an 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. Laurens 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 three 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: all my Saturday Night Live friends out there who watched
Speaker 1: in the nineties like I did, Yes, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: basically just the nuclei of these atoms and the electrons
Speaker 1: all going we yeah, especially if it's something like hydrogen,
Speaker 1: because then all you have our protons, which are positively
Speaker 1: charged sub atomic particles, and electro on, which are the
Speaker 1: negatively charged sub atomic 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 do replicate it right inefficiently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. Unfortunately, the amount of energy we have to
Speaker 1: pour into replicating it is more than what we get
Speaker 1: out of it. So therefore it's not a good energy source.
Speaker 1: But it's a pretty light show. We are hoping that
Speaker 1: we can make that an energy source. And if you've
Speaker 1: listened to our fusion episode, you know what we're talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll cover it a little bit more in a in
Speaker 1: a second too. So, yeah, we use uh an electric
Speaker 1: current apply to the gas to get 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 circuit right, and then
Speaker 1: that allows the negative particles to move towards the positive particles.
Speaker 1: In the process, you're ejecting 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: giant and uh. And that's just one example of how
Speaker 1: we use the the plasma here on our planet. Not
Speaker 1: all of them are so violent that one is actually
Speaker 1: kind of awesome. There are other uses for plasma torches.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about two. So when we're talking about a
Speaker 1: plasma like that, like in the case to 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, That's not what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. We're talking about actual magnetic fields. You
Speaker 1: could use those like electro magnets. You could use electromagnets
Speaker 1: 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 an
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 one of
Speaker 1: those those terms that can be used in multiple ways
Speaker 1: depending upon what specific technology you're referring to. So with lasers,
Speaker 1: it's slightly different than with plasma. What I mean with
Speaker 1: plasma is that it does tend to to spread out
Speaker 1: kind of dissipates. So let's say that you 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
Speaker 1: of steam. That steam will just essentially go everywhere to
Speaker 1: fill up the vaulvolume of the room you are in,
Speaker 1: assuming that the room you are in is not palatial,
Speaker 1: and that the steam can eventually cool down enough to
Speaker 1: condense into water. So, uh, you know, that's that's the
Speaker 1: same short thing with plasma. It's gonna spread out. It
Speaker 1: behaves the way of gas. What it doesn't just maintain
Speaker 1: its shape. So that's why you would need something like
Speaker 1: a magnetic field to keep it in a specific shape
Speaker 1: if that was your goal. And again, if it were
Speaker 1: spreading out, then that would also mean to be losing
Speaker 1: energy fairly rapidly. And cooling down doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: you want to stand too close to a plasma torch
Speaker 1: as it's going off, but it does mean that it's
Speaker 1: not going to You know, when we talk about something
Speaker 1: that can burn hotter than the surface of the sun,
Speaker 1: we don't mean that if you turn it on and
Speaker 1: immediately starts to burn a hole straight down through the
Speaker 1: now a couple of feet away, it's gonna kinda 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 um. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second. I like that we keep
Speaker 1: on hinting the stuff we're going to talk about teasers.
Speaker 1: We're actually kind of getting into it right now. 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. There the tubes, the tubes are filled with
Speaker 1: with an inert gas usually classically are gone and uh
Speaker 1: and a little bit of liquid mercury and um. So,
Speaker 1: 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. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is excellent, it is right now anyway, it's real
Speaker 1: enough for me. We are the music makers, Yes, we
Speaker 1: are dream of dreams. Yes. Um. And when when that
Speaker 1: when that gas plasma i fis um, the electrons begin
Speaker 1: migrating through the tube due to this electric charge. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: this this energy makes liquid mercury gasify all right. And
Speaker 1: then those uh, those those little gasified mercury atoms um
Speaker 1: collide with the argon plasma, and the the electrons in
Speaker 1: the in the mercury atoms start getting excited by these
Speaker 1: collisions and and jumping up a level. Right. And now
Speaker 1: now that this this, this is basically how photons are formed.
Speaker 1: When um, when something collides with the particle and gets
Speaker 1: those electrons excited, it jumps up a level, and then
Speaker 1: when it contracts back down to its former position, a
Speaker 1: photon is given off. Right, Because what's happening is you're
Speaker 1: pouring energy into the atom, which is allowing the electron
Speaker 1: to move to further out from the nucleus. When the
Speaker 1: electron starts coming back into the nucleus, that means it
Speaker 1: has to rule lease that the energy that was used
Speaker 1: to push it out in the first place. That release
Speaker 1: tends to be in the form of a photon, so
Speaker 1: a light particle. In the case with mercury, most of
Speaker 1: those light particles are actually ultra violet correct um, which
Speaker 1: which is invisible to the human eye. So it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a very useful light bulb if that's all it did,
Speaker 1: I mean, apart from you know, maybe you wanted to
Speaker 1: have a wicked black light kind of thing going on, right,
Speaker 1: and that is how black lights work. Um. But but
Speaker 1: the the inside of most bulbs that are not black
Speaker 1: lights are covered with them with a powdered phosphor coating
Speaker 1: and um. This these these phosphor atoms get bombarded by
Speaker 1: the UV photons, uh, go through one of those fancy
Speaker 1: electron jumps, and in the process release a visible light photon. Right.
Speaker 1: So you're you're actually having two incidents of the same
Speaker 1: process going on within a fluorescent bulb. It's just one
Speaker 1: of them is what is giving us the light that
Speaker 1: we can see within the visible spectrum and uh and
Speaker 1: and the other is the more practical from a energy
Speaker 1: conversion and um. And also I mean it's stuff like
Speaker 1: ourgon gas is pretty common and inexpensive. By the way,
Speaker 1: the fact that there is mercury in floresce invulves is
Speaker 1: one of those reasons why you want to be very
Speaker 1: careful with floresce involves, especially break them open and lick them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're disposing of fluoresce evolves, you need to be
Speaker 1: very careful because mercury is very toxic. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: can make you go crazy and not in a fun
Speaker 1: Las Vegas kind of way. Science fact. Yes, So that's
Speaker 1: one way that we use plasma along with torches. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and this this brings us actually to plasma TVs
Speaker 1: because plasma TVs are are essentially um made. A plasma
Speaker 1: display is made up of a bunch of very small
Speaker 1: colored fluorescent lights. Um. By altering the kind of phosphors
Speaker 1: that you're using in a fluorescent lights coating, you can
Speaker 1: alter the kind of visible light that comes out of it. Right,
Speaker 1: So what color you actually receive? And uh and these
Speaker 1: are are our gp uh green blue red green blue lights. Right.
Speaker 1: So uh and here's an interest things. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that you know people who are home theater
Speaker 1: enthusiasts and you know they either subscribe to L. E. D.
Speaker 1: L c D or plasma TVs. Uh. One of the
Speaker 1: things they talk about is contrast ratio, which is the
Speaker 1: difference between the whites that you can display on a
Speaker 1: screen versus the the shades of black that you can
Speaker 1: display on a screen. And if you have a true black,
Speaker 1: that means that if you were to turn off all
Speaker 1: the lights in your room and look at your TV,
Speaker 1: it should just disappear. It should not even be noticab glowing. Right.
Speaker 1: If you have an l c D television, chances are
Speaker 1: is that if you have all the lights off and
Speaker 1: you have a black screen on your TV and the
Speaker 1: TV is on, you can actually see more like a
Speaker 1: really really deep gray color. And it's because it has
Speaker 1: a back light, whereas plasma televisions do not have that backlight.
Speaker 1: It's just relying upon that excitation of the gas. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: it's just all of these little pixels of of red
Speaker 1: grit and blue light that are they are very small
Speaker 1: and uh contributing to a larger picture. Right. So when
Speaker 1: it's when the screen is is black, it's because there's
Speaker 1: nothing active. It's not that you know, there's like a
Speaker 1: little tiny shield between the back light and you, which
Speaker 1: is technically what's going on with most l c d s.
Speaker 1: The shield 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, No, 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: waste 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 useful when you're trying to make things
Speaker 1: stick together like metal um, right, especially if it's metal
Speaker 1: that's going to be under tremendous stress and poor and
Speaker 1: poor conditions, you know, like like having you know, salty
Speaker 1: water being tossed at it. Sure. Sure, but plasma waste
Speaker 1: converters are a little different. It's using the same technology
Speaker 1: as plasma torches in the that you have a plasma
Speaker 1: torch at the heart of the plasma waste converter. And
Speaker 1: anyone who's listened to tech stuff long enough knows that
Speaker 1: I'm crazy about this idea because I just think it's
Speaker 1: so cool. The idea is that you are using plasma
Speaker 1: in the case, in the sense of a plasma torch
Speaker 1: to break down the molecular bonds of garbage. So you
Speaker 1: bring garbage in and the garbage gets exposed to a
Speaker 1: plasma torch within a furnace. The furnace itself is lined
Speaker 1: with lots of protective material to keep it at a
Speaker 1: workable temperature, so it doesn't you know, break down. But
Speaker 1: the garbage itself, when it's exposed to this intense heat,
Speaker 1: the molecules that hold it together, that those bonds that
Speaker 1: hold the molecules together rather they break and it turns.
Speaker 1: It's called molecular dissociation. Yeah, I've dissociated with some molecules
Speaker 1: in my time, and let me tell you it's a
Speaker 1: violent process. And so in this case, what happens is
Speaker 1: the material breaks down into one of two forms. Either
Speaker 1: if it's carbon based, it then turns into gas, or
Speaker 1: if it is not common 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 gasoline. Yeah, and or even if you just
Speaker 1: had it on site, if you had energy production on
Speaker 1: site along with plasma waste converter, then you could actually
Speaker 1: generate electricity. Yeah, you can fuel a converter, and if
Speaker 1: you made enough electricity from the fuel. It all depends
Speaker 1: on what the garbage is made out of, but if
Speaker 1: you made enough, you could even feed electricity back. And so,
Speaker 1: but then the other stuff, the slag just melts off,
Speaker 1: and if you let it cool by air, it become ms. Uh.
Speaker 1: This rocky substance looks like volcanic glass, and you can
Speaker 1: use that in construction materials. If you cool it with
Speaker 1: compressed air, it turns into what's called rock wool, which
Speaker 1: is very uh effective insulator. Uh. If you cool it
Speaker 1: by water, it turns into this little pebbly kind of
Speaker 1: substance that you can use for multiple purposes. It's just
Speaker 1: a neat idea and it's uh, you know, it comes
Speaker 1: at several different problems all at once. Energy production, although
Speaker 1: on a very small scale. Again, it's not like this
Speaker 1: is going to it's not like it's gonna be mr fusion, right,
Speaker 1: it's not a powery car um but energy production as
Speaker 1: well as getting rid of garbage in a way that
Speaker 1: it would mean that we turn our garbage into fuel
Speaker 1: sources and eventually we could even if the if the
Speaker 1: facilities were large enough, get rid of landfills, we would
Speaker 1: eventually mine 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, just burning. You're applying
Speaker 1: so much energy that it just breaks it down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's different from burning garbage and then releasing
Speaker 1: toxins into the air. Keeping in mind that the gases
Speaker 1: that you are getting from this process would be pretty
Speaker 1: toxic in some cases. But that's why you have to
Speaker 1: have the chemical scrubbing part where you use uh. Special,
Speaker 1: you cool the gas down in several in several steps,
Speaker 1: and once it's cool enough, you then combine it with
Speaker 1: other gases that will allow the useful stuff to pass
Speaker 1: through and become synthetic fuel and the other stuff, the
Speaker 1: toxic stuff would bind with other agents to become essentially
Speaker 1: inert material that you could then dispose up safely. At
Speaker 1: least that's the ideal. Um. All that being said, really
Speaker 1: expensive proposition, which is why we don't see it everywhere,
Speaker 1: right right, But but pretty cool though, um and uh
Speaker 1: and and this is possibly why people in science fiction
Speaker 1: decide that, hey, you know this thing where we're literally
Speaker 1: breaking down the molecular structure of atoms. So that's yeah,
Speaker 1: why don't we use that as a weapon. I mean,
Speaker 1: if this is, if this is something that can turn
Speaker 1: stuff into just gas or molten slag, wouldn't that make
Speaker 1: an amazing weapon? And in theory, sure, and that's probably
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it's so popular in science fiction.
Speaker 1: But we'll we'll take a closer look at that before
Speaker 1: we get into the science fiction e part and the
Speaker 1: actual weapon part. Let's take a quick break, all right,
Speaker 1: So we touched on it. Why you would want a
Speaker 1: plasma weapon because plasma is the stuff of stars, and
Speaker 1: if you were able to wield that in a weaponized way,
Speaker 1: you would be the biggest, baddest monster in the universe.
Speaker 1: You were looking at me to see how I was
Speaker 1: 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: a little sonic waves, still kinetic. But then you could
Speaker 1: have a weaponized laser that would be sort of a
Speaker 1: thermal weapon. Yea more burning, that's true. So the idea
Speaker 1: I think is that a plasma weapon would be something
Speaker 1: that would cause damage to your target through massive amounts
Speaker 1: of heat, kind of the way we were talking about
Speaker 1: with the plasma to massive amounts of damage. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: wouldn't just be like it lights up very pretty, although
Speaker 1: 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 implementations in science fiction. I really do
Speaker 1: think it is because they look cool, and they look cool,
Speaker 1: and they make noises or whiter or brown noises. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not pupu laser. It's different from pup laser. But
Speaker 1: for example, we've mentioned this before. Lauren and I both
Speaker 1: are fans of the Halo franchise, and in Halo, the
Speaker 1: alien bad guys they tend to use plasma weapons. I think,
Speaker 1: in fact, all of their according to the Halo wiki anyway,
Speaker 1: um not not all of the weather there that the
Speaker 1: needlers the one kind of weapon under contention, but everything
Speaker 1: else that the Covenant uses is u is a plasma
Speaker 1: because they talk about plasma rifles. They talk about plasma pistols.
Speaker 1: If you want to yeah, if you want a newcombo somebody,
Speaker 1: you've got to have a plasma pistol and then a
Speaker 1: human pistol and then you charge the plasma pistol really
Speaker 1: good for taking shields down. Yeah, and that's that's the
Speaker 1: real purpose of it in the game, right, Some weapons
Speaker 1: are very good at doing particular things, like the can
Speaker 1: The weapons are good at hurting people once their shields
Speaker 1: are down, but they're not so good at taking down shields,
Speaker 1: Whereas the plasma weapons are really good at taking the
Speaker 1: shields down. And if you're me, they you could shoot
Speaker 1: somebody a billion times with a plasma weapon and they
Speaker 1: never seemed to die, whereas I can take a hit
Speaker 1: and a half and I'm done. Also that I'm really
Speaker 1: bad at Halo. Let's be fair. I'm probably not hitting
Speaker 1: them at all. I think I'm hitting them, but in reality,
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of spinning around, pointing my gun in
Speaker 1: the air and going within within the Halo universe, by
Speaker 1: the way, And I found this interesting just because I'm
Speaker 1: such a Halo nerd um uh. Supposedly humanity had tried
Speaker 1: to create a plasma tank at some point, because you know,
Speaker 1: because we were in this hypothetical future using um using
Speaker 1: plasma for garbage disposal and stuff like that, and uh,
Speaker 1: but it never came to fruition, right, and whereas the
Speaker 1: Covenants certainly did as the Wraith, as I recall, does
Speaker 1: fire giant blobs of plasma. And the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: that in the within the Halo universe, these plasma rejectiles
Speaker 1: behave in a very particular way. They seem to go
Speaker 1: straight out from the weapon. They don't. They don't bend
Speaker 1: to gravity in any way. They do not. So it's
Speaker 1: almost more like a laser in that sense. It's like
Speaker 1: an energy weapon in that sense, but it's an energy
Speaker 1: weapon where it is a cohesive blob, very slow cohesive
Speaker 1: blob compared to, for example, the air space of a
Speaker 1: of a swallow. No, no, they a bullet or right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the physical projectiles, like if you're using a pistol,
Speaker 1: it's not like you can track the motion of the bullet.
Speaker 1: In Halo, right, you just you see whether or not
Speaker 1: you hit something by the reaction. See a sniper trail.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, you can see a trail, but you
Speaker 1: can't see the bullet itself, you know, you see the
Speaker 1: evidence of where the bullet was, whereas with the plasma weapon,
Speaker 1: you can actually track the projectile as it fires across
Speaker 1: the field of battle. So and also I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention that Star Trek a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: the plasma cannons, bombs, bullets, torpedoes, beans, um as, some
Speaker 1: forms of phasers are are also supposedly plasma based. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just mainly because it sounds scientific and interesting.
Speaker 1: And again they you know, when you know that a
Speaker 1: plasma is an ionized gas and can be a superheated gas,
Speaker 1: then that tells you, oh, well, you could have this
Speaker 1: blob of stuff. But it starts to raise some pretty
Speaker 1: tough questions like could we have a science fiction ee
Speaker 1: plasma weapon? And if not, what what's the problem? Where?
Speaker 1: Where are we hitting the challenge of doing this? And
Speaker 1: there's a few physics really is the problem. It's a
Speaker 1: big one. So one of those challenges We kind of
Speaker 1: hinted at it already when I was talking about taking
Speaker 1: a shower. So imagine you're taking that shower and you
Speaker 1: want the steam to all go into one place in
Speaker 1: the room and stay there. Really hard, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? Um? Yeah, it's some people have pointed out
Speaker 1: like think about if you had a gun that could
Speaker 1: fire steam. Sure, if you were just right there, right
Speaker 1: where the barrel of the gun is ended and you've
Speaker 1: never gotten a steam burn. It's it's bad. Yeah, it's bad.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're at point blank range for a
Speaker 1: steam gun, that would be bad business. It would hurt
Speaker 1: a lot. So same thing with like a plasma torch,
Speaker 1: except it wouldn't hurt so much as you would start
Speaker 1: to dissociate. Um but uh better if you get more
Speaker 1: than a few feet away, Yeah, if you get more
Speaker 1: than a few feet away, it all disperses it. It
Speaker 1: has this blooming problem again that it just starts to
Speaker 1: that there's nothing holding the plasma into a shape like
Speaker 1: a projectile so that it could maintain some sort of
Speaker 1: coherence until it hit a target. So if I shoot
Speaker 1: a steam gun at Lauren and she's fifteen feet away,
Speaker 1: She's just gonna sit there and say, like, nice smoke machine,
Speaker 1: you got there, idiot, Whereas I'm thinking, like, shoot, should
Speaker 1: have got the other weapon, like the crossbow or something.
Speaker 1: This isn't terrible portraits. You might get a little damp.
Speaker 1: So so this is basically a Doctor Horrible's friend moist.
Speaker 1: I think this is pretty much so. Now, granted with plasma,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a super high energy ga US and
Speaker 1: it's not that it would lose its energy instantaneously, but
Speaker 1: it would be you know, it disperses pretty quickly. So
Speaker 1: another thing is that plasma tends to be less dense
Speaker 1: than atmosphere, especially if it's like a hydrogen gas. I
Speaker 1: 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. Okay, So if I if
Speaker 1: if I'm shooting at you in our own real world Halo,
Speaker 1: and I have a hydrogen based plasma weapon, and you're
Speaker 1: just 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 handloading your sniper rifle at
Speaker 1: me um but luckily I serpentine. So anyway, the the
Speaker 1: this is a problem. You would have to have a
Speaker 1: super dense plasma so that it would not just float
Speaker 1: straight up. But that means that it would behave According
Speaker 1: to the rules of gravity. So just like an actual projectile,
Speaker 1: if you fire a gun with a physical bullet and
Speaker 1: you have a you know, you have plenty of space
Speaker 1: that that bullet will hit the ground if there's nothing
Speaker 1: to interrupt its flight. It's going to hit the ground
Speaker 1: in the same amount of time, by the way, as
Speaker 1: it would take you to drop the bullet from the
Speaker 1: height of the gun. So if I dropped if I
Speaker 1: dropped a bullet straight down, and I had a gun
Speaker 1: that is parallel to the ground, right, it's not pointed
Speaker 1: up in any way, it's not arcing. Uh, And and
Speaker 1: I fire the gun and I dropped the bullet at
Speaker 1: the same time, both bullets will hit the ground at
Speaker 1: the same time. It's just the bullet that's fired from
Speaker 1: the gun will hit the ground really far away. But
Speaker 1: that's because gravity. So gravity would would also affect plasma
Speaker 1: because you would have to have it super dense enough
Speaker 1: so it doesn't flow in the air. But that means
Speaker 1: that don't done. So there's that issue. And then how
Speaker 1: you keep the plasma together, How do you keep it
Speaker 1: so that it's a projectile? The only way I can
Speaker 1: think of is that you use some sort of traveling
Speaker 1: magnetic field that keeps it in that shape. So you
Speaker 1: would have to have something that could create a magnetic
Speaker 1: field around your plasma and travel with the plasma projectile
Speaker 1: until it gets to its target. We don't really have
Speaker 1: anything that can do that, and if we did, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that a plasma weapon would necessarily be the
Speaker 1: 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 the plasma sword is is said to
Speaker 1: be controlled by by magnetic field generators that hold 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 word. So with magic, you don't
Speaker 1: have to have a scientific explanation. You don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just magic. Hey it's Jonathan. We're going to take another
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be right back. So we are
Speaker 1: nowhere near the point where we would be able to
Speaker 1: generate a plasma of the sufficient density and then keep
Speaker 1: it in the right shape and have it act as
Speaker 1: a projectile. We just don't have that here. So that's
Speaker 1: first challenge. Second challenge propelling the plasma. How do you
Speaker 1: get it to go out of the gun towards your
Speaker 1: target and maintain any sort of speed um I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe again, another magnetic field. Possibly you could use a
Speaker 1: a very strong magnetic field to to repel the plasma
Speaker 1: towards your target. Doesn't seem like it would be terribly accurate.
Speaker 1: It's almost like just shoving someone and also also still
Speaker 1: not I mean, if you can, if you can really
Speaker 1: direct that sort of back back field, you get back
Speaker 1: into the territory of wind just weaponizing that. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: you if you're talking about a plasma where you are
Speaker 1: generating the plasma by pushing compressed air past electrodes, as
Speaker 1: opposed to already having generated plasma and then firing that,
Speaker 1: if you're making the plasma on site like you would
Speaker 1: with a plasma torch, then uh, I guess you could
Speaker 1: have it be kind of like a plasma flamethrower. That's
Speaker 1: as closing or maybe as doing a quick puff or
Speaker 1: a vortex of air. Have you ever seen those air
Speaker 1: cannon that kind of had the elastic bag And then,
Speaker 1: you know, I leaned back from the microphone to visually
Speaker 1: display that for all of our listeners. I appreciate that
Speaker 1: because it told me that you actually understand what it
Speaker 1: is that you immediately knew what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: because you were making the universal gesture of this jerk
Speaker 1: is about to hit me with an air cannon. Um
Speaker 1: if you guys don't know what I'm talking about. They're
Speaker 1: these air cannons. They're sold as novelties. You can find
Speaker 1: them all over the place. I think think Geek has them.
Speaker 1: But you can use them to fire a puff of
Speaker 1: air at a person all the way across the room,
Speaker 1: and that air will maintain its shaped by creating this vortex,
Speaker 1: the swirling uh motion of air that allows it to
Speaker 1: kind of be a projectile over decent distances. It does
Speaker 1: eventually disperse. It's not like it's going to maintain that indefinitely.
Speaker 1: But you maybe your plasma weapon would create a vortex
Speaker 1: similar to that and be able to be propelled through
Speaker 1: a quick puff. But you know, it's still kind of
Speaker 1: an issue there. That's how do you do that? If
Speaker 1: if you were able to generate enough kinetic energy through uh,
Speaker 1: the magnetic field, like you said, why not just make
Speaker 1: a kinetic weapon rather than a plasma weapon? Um, and
Speaker 1: then finally have the energy that would be required to
Speaker 1: make a plasma weapon work, right, because yeah, it's you
Speaker 1: would really need. You would need so much that it
Speaker 1: really wouldn't be mobile, right. Yeah. First of all, just
Speaker 1: to generate a super hot plasma, you would need quite
Speaker 1: a bit of electricity, and you need a sustainable amount.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you wouldn't. Any bad that we have that's
Speaker 1: portable right now would not work. So we'd have to
Speaker 1: have incredible like maybe like a little fusion generator and
Speaker 1: whatever the weapon is. And uh, and then you're talking
Speaker 1: about carrying around a fusion mom in pistol form. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you are essentially connected to an enormous power facility by
Speaker 1: a cable which is not terribly mobile. No, um, certainly
Speaker 1: not fair personalized weapon. Yeah, And and it's beyond just
Speaker 1: the generating of the plasma, right if we also have
Speaker 1: to have this magnetic field, That energy has to come
Speaker 1: from somewhere, and if we're talking about propelling this plasma
Speaker 1: in any sort of way that actually makes it a
Speaker 1: you know, something that's more deadly than the Moon and
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 and
Speaker 1: weaponize it in a different way that's far more effective.
Speaker 1: So what we're coming down to is right now, a
Speaker 1: plasma weapons not truly in the sense of the science
Speaker 1: fiction plasma weapons. A plasma weapons not really feasible. It's
Speaker 1: not not possible with the technology we have, and it's
Speaker 1: not really practical because again, with that amount of energy
Speaker 1: we would need, we could probably find more efficient ways
Speaker 1: of 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 then 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 the laser gun and take glorp. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: I would do it. So that makes it. There are
Speaker 1: weapons that exists, 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 phy 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 fempto 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 it's
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 away,
Speaker 1: because these things, I mean, a laser has no effective
Speaker 1: 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 see an instantaneous But Lauren happens to be
Speaker 1: here's a clear line of side. I can see her,
Speaker 1: and I'm firing this at her because apparently she's really
Speaker 1: cheesed me off. But there happens to be an enormous
Speaker 1: tank that's sitting yards between the two of us. Um,
Speaker 1: it's off to the side, so it's not like directly
Speaker 1: in my line of fire. However, this enormous tank is
Speaker 1: a conductor, and there is a very good chance that
Speaker 1: the lightning that's going down is going to zap onto
Speaker 1: that tank, as opposed to continuing down and zapping Lauren
Speaker 1: the same way that. For example, um, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're standing next to a very large tree. Um, you
Speaker 1: know that that that tree versus an open plane. If
Speaker 1: if you're in an open plane, you don't want to
Speaker 1: be the tallest thing in it. If if you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of a lightning storm, because and if there's
Speaker 1: a lightning storm and there's an open plane and a
Speaker 1: very tall tree, you don't want to be under the
Speaker 1: tree because again it's it's gonna be that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't predict exactly where this is going to go.
Speaker 1: It's a somewhat of a chaotic event. Now. But but
Speaker 1: the largest conductor nearby is a pretty good gas right,
Speaker 1: So if Lauren's the largest conductor nearby, first of all,
Speaker 1: there aren't any other people around, which is tiny. But uh,
Speaker 1: then she might actually get hit by this lightning blast. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, the applications that I have seen for
Speaker 1: this weapon and are not meant to go against human
Speaker 1: targets or even vehicular targets, although that has been uh
Speaker 1: something that's been proposed. Instead, it's a means of detonating
Speaker 1: what is a suspected explosive device. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that you get a safe distance away from the device,
Speaker 1: you aim this thing at it, and then this blast
Speaker 1: of electricity hits the device and would then uh activate
Speaker 1: it or or destroy it, so that you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about endangering someone's life. You wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: try and deactivate it in person, or you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: have to send a robot to it. You just blast
Speaker 1: it 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, stage testing and
Speaker 1: waiting for for money kind of thing where it may
Speaker 1: even be perfectly viable. It's just that you have to
Speaker 1: get to the point where it funds and it actually
Speaker 1: gets into the hands of the people who want to
Speaker 1: use it. Then there's something called the pulsed energy Project
Speaker 1: dectile 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 these PEPs are they're classified
Speaker 1: as non lethal, but they can be quite lethal. The
Speaker 1: idea here is that you use a laser. Again, you
Speaker 1: point the laser at your target, and the laser is
Speaker 1: very high powered and it ends up vaporizing part of
Speaker 1: 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. Now it might
Speaker 1: not be on this gale 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 stain amount of time. Yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 1: meant to incapacitate the target, and in fact has been
Speaker 1: referenced as being a weapon that would be used in
Speaker 1: something like riot control. Kind of terrifying. Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, for reals, set your phasers to
Speaker 1: stun kind of kind of weapon is really nifty and
Speaker 1: Star Trek when everyone is a good guy, um and
Speaker 1: they're only using it on bad guys. But here in
Speaker 1: the real world is a little bit a little bit,
Speaker 1: especially since since it is said to cause tremendous pain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's something that just don't you don't
Speaker 1: just don't just go oh, you know, it's more like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you can't do anything. Um, So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: but those are two examples of existing weapons that are
Speaker 1: using plasma in some way. It's just not in the
Speaker 1: way that we think of when we think plasma gun.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's not that plasma is completely useless
Speaker 1: in the in the weapons field, it's just that it's
Speaker 1: not directly used as a projectile the way we think
Speaker 1: of when we play Halo. There is I did read
Speaker 1: about about something called a plasma shield. Have you heard
Speaker 1: about this one? No, Um, It's it's a device that's
Speaker 1: using a dynamic pulse detonation and um. And it's basically
Speaker 1: a short but intense laser pulse creates a ball of
Speaker 1: plasma and then a second laser pulse generates a shock
Speaker 1: wave the way that we were talking about a moment
Speaker 1: ago with the PEPs um. It creates a shock wave
Speaker 1: within the plasma that generates a flash bang. Wow, that
Speaker 1: would sounds like that would be terrifying. Yes, yeah, and
Speaker 1: loud and and very loud. Yeah, and and and that
Speaker 1: this this also you know, being being more defensive and offensive.
Speaker 1: It's meanted disorient It's meant to dis orient and to
Speaker 1: distract and to allow your forces to either withdraw or
Speaker 1: to engage in a way that the opposing forces cannot
Speaker 1: anticipate because they're currently dealing with the fact that their
Speaker 1: ears don't work anymore. And that wraps up this classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a tech company, a technology, a trend in tech,
Speaker 1: a person in tech, anything along those lines, let me know.
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