Science and technology is advancing to a new level as we enter the 21st century, we are just starting to grasp what was once thought science fiction as reality. An important part of the new technology in this reality will utilize a substance which was discovered in 1879 called plasma. Plasma is the most common form of matter in the visible world and can be utilized in many fields of science and technology. Plasmas are comprised of individually charged atom particles that collectively have powerful and specific effects deriving from different magnetic properties. Common examples of plasmas include fluorescent lights, flames of fire, and lightning. These examples are all comprised as simple particles but when these particles are brought together they create things such as light, heat, or unimaginable amounts of energy. Because of its unpredictable nature and magnetic properties, plasmas can be important tools in many aspects of future technologies. Because plasmas are so unique and so seemingly unpredictable, an entirely new field of physics that is usually only understood by experts was created to explore the properties and behaviors of plasma. One such expert is a UCLA Professor, Dr. Francis F. Chen, and in his article “The ‘Sources’ of Plasma Physics” published in the journal “IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science” he gives information about the research he has done that has helped evolve plasma from a mystery to the valuable tool it is becoming today.

Plasma physics and engineering are the basis of the creation of new and more useful plasmas. These new plasmas are created in devices that can be described as “sources.” These sources use very complicated parts that use magnetic fields, reactive metals, and other complex objects that form small atom particles into the singular objects whose properties of energy are utilized in order to use for a specific purpose. Newer plasma sources are still being developed by using newer techniques of fusion and laser technology to develop plasmas that put out more energy and create electrical and magnetic properties that can do more things for less money than conventional methods we use today.

Some of the main reasons why plasma products are either expensive or relatively hard to find can be attributed to the underdevelopment of sources and a lack of a complete grasp as to the nature of plasma. For just as we don’t know exactly where lightning will strike even the most educated experts cannot fully grasp what the compilations of atomic particles will do. Dr. Chen describes the experiments that he and his colleagues performed in order to obtain data about the properties and behaviors of plasma they were able to create. However, in these experiments some problems with equipment and data arose that can be attributed to the relatively unpredictable nature of plasma. Problems such as this is one of the big reasons why plasmas are not an integral part of life today and why the technology still has a lot more development to go through before it is fully utilized.

Even now in the primitive form of the technology plasmas are still part of your everyday life if you have any fluorescent or neon lights lighting your house. For the substance inside the tube is a plasma and an advantage of these lights is that they can last for long amounts of time and create bright light using very little power. Plasmas are also just starting to become a very important tool in the industrial manufacturing process in the fields of semiconductor creation, optical and magnetic materials including CDs, DVDs and other consumer disks, corrosion resistance chemicals, high pressure and temperature jets, and most recently seen in flat panel electronics including TVs, LCD’s, dashboards, and computers. Plasma will be a valuable tool in the near future, whether it is in the form of something as complicated as a form of fusion energy, which can only be described as energy as powerful as one created by Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Other uses may include the space program and the knowledge to fully understand and utilize the most important plasma of them all, the Sun. Another plasma can also be used for National Security in order to protect the people from problems with the dangers our nuclear weapons produce such as radiation.

Even though we are starting to see the more complicated applications of plasma today, the field of plasma physics and plasma technology as a whole is still an underdeveloped field and in order to take full advantage of this fourth state of matter there is much research still left to do with this immature science. Just realize that things you may not even grasp as possible may soon be something you take for granted every time you wake in the morning, and it may be attributed to a weird little substance called plasma.