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NASA's Curious Universe

Plasma, Plasma, Everywhere!

NASA's Curious Universe

Katie Konans

Science

4.51K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The night sky is full of planets, satellites, and cosmic objects we can see with our eyes and telescopes. In between all that material there’s a huge amount of invisible matter and the vast majority of it is called plasma. Follow along with scientists Doug Rowland and Don Gurnett, as we journey through this mysterious and electrifying substance.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

We think of space as being empty.

0:02.8

And I don't mean like planets and stars.

0:04.7

Of course, those things are out there.

0:06.8

Even the space between the planets and the stars is full and it's rich and it's dynamic.

0:13.4

You get all these different charged particles of the gas, the plasma.

0:17.8

You get electric and magnetic fields.

0:19.1

You get radiation.

0:20.0

You get dust.

0:21.0

You know, you get all these different things, you get radiation, you get dust, you know,

0:26.5

you get all these different things up there. And yeah, they're so rarefied that you don't see it from the ground with your eye. There's this big invisible population. So space being empty

0:33.6

is the biggest misconception. I think it's just, it's full and it's important and it's

0:38.0

interesting. Just so many things that if we could see them, they'd be on the wall of every

0:44.7

art museum. I mean, they are just glorious, some of these things.

0:52.5

This is NASA's curious universe.

0:57.0

Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

1:01.0

I'm Patty Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

1:07.0

You're probably familiar with three states of matter. Sol solids, liquids, and gases, like ice,

1:14.6

water, and steam. Beyond gases, there's another state of matter, called plasma. And it makes up 99.9%

1:24.6

of the observable universe. This is completely different from plasma in our blood.

1:31.3

We're talking about a state of matter that's similar to a gas, but with different properties.

1:37.3

We actually don't see this kind of plasma very often on Earth.

1:42.3

But when we do, it can be in beautiful and exciting ways.

...

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