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slash UK slash AI for people. Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American

for the seven days starting April 30th, 2008. I'm Steve

Mercky. This week on the podcast, we'll enter the fascinating world of plasma, not the blood

kind, the physics kind, with Stanford University physicist Roger Blandford. Plus, we'll

test your knowledge about some recent science in the news.

Roger Blanford is the co-author of the Blanford-Zniak process, the leading explanation for how black holes produce jets of plasma traveling at near light speed.

But what's plasma?

Well, he'll explain that.

He's the director of the Cavley Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford.

He's also a professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Blanford's research interests range from high-energy astrophysics and cosmology to general relativity and gravitational lensing.

On April 12th, he gave a plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in St. Louis. Scientific Americans, J. R. Minkel, was at the

meeting, and he spoke to Blanford after his talk. I wonder, could you start by telling

our listeners what a plasma is?

Oh, a plasma is an ionized gas. It's one where the electrons are separated from the nuclei, usually formed at high temperatures, and most of the barionic matter in the universe is in the form of plasma.

Now, what's barionic matter for those who don't know?

This is just regular matter like you and I,

...