Researchers at the University of Missouri have devised a method of creating and launching rings of plasma through open air. Depending on your point of view, this could have significant repercussions for the energy generation and storage industry… or, more realistically, this could be exactly what the nascent plasma weapons industry needs to finally get plasma rifles and shields onto the market.

Despite what you may have learnt at high school, there are actually four states of matter: Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Plasmas are similar to gases in that they don’t have a definite shape or volume, but they also differ significantly, in that they are electrically conductive and produce a magnetic field. Some common examples of plasma are lightning, neon and fluorescent lighting, the Sun, and — this will blow your mind — plasma televisions.

To create a plasma, you essentially rip electrons away from their parent nuclei, leaving a ton of positively-charged nuclei in a sea of free-flowing electrons. It is this sea of electrons that imbue plasma with its electrical conductivity, its magnetic field, and its sensitivity to external electromagnetic fields. To rip the electrons away, you generally need a very high voltage potential (as in neon lights) or immense heat (stars). In the case of plasma TVs and fluorescent lighting, these excited electrons collide with mercury, producing ultraviolet light that collides with phosphors, which luminesce and produce light.

Now, in general, it’s very easy to produce plasmas in a vacuum, and to control them with massive electromagnets. Most of our attempts at controlled nuclear fusion, which involves the creation of high-energy deuterium-tritium plasma, have required immensely powerful electromagnets to create and/or control the plasma. (See: 500MW from half a gram of hydrogen: The hunt for fusion power heats up.) The University of Missouri, however, has devised a method of creating plasma that creates its own magnetic field, which acts as a containment field as it travels through open air.

We don’t know the exact technique used, only that it involves exploding a wire with a very high voltage to create the plasma — the same method used to detonate nuclear bombs. The ring of plasma, which you can see in the video above, survives for a few milliseconds as it travels two feet through open air. According to Randy Curry, the lead researcher, the system could be enlarged to handle more power, creating stronger plasmas that travel farther through the air.

As for what this breakthrough actually means for the scientific community, we’re not entirely sure. The University of Missouri claims that this technique could “revolutionize energy generation and storage,” but doesn’t actually say how. Presumably there is some basis to this claim, though there seems to be very little in the way of peer-reviewed science in this area. Much more likely is the weaponization of the technology — imagine a plasma rifle that can cut through just about anything, or a plasma shield that can instantly incinerate incoming ammunition and missiles. This theory is made all the more plausible by the research group’s primary source of funding: the Office of Naval Research — the same office of the US Navy that funds research into the humbling and/or terrifying railguns that you can see in the video below.

Now read ExtremeTech’s feature on the science of beam weapons

Research paper: doi: 10.1109/PLASMA.2012.6383564 – “Investigation of a toroidal air plasma under atmospheric conditions”

[Image credit: Wikipedia]