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The Question
(Submitted October 07, 1997)
What is plasma (the fourth state of matter) used for? Where can it
be found on Earth? What would the texture be?
The Answer
Plasmas are common and have many uses. The flame of a fire is a
plasma, and you know what the uses of fire are, and you know what its
'texture' is like. The mass in the Sun and most other stars is in the form
of plasma. There are instruments, called inductively-coupled plasma
spectrometers, which inject a sample into a plasma and can determine the
sample's chemical composition at the level of parts per billion.
Andy Ptak
for the Ask a High-Energy Astronomer
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