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A Stable Plasma Ring Has Been Created In Open Air For the First Time Ever (futurism.com)

New submitter mrcoder83 shares a report from Futurism: Engineers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have been able to create a stable plasma ring without a container. According to the Caltech press release, it's "essentially capturing lightning in a bottle, but without the bottle." This remarkable feat was achieved using only a stream of water and a crystal plate, made from either quartz and lithium niobate. The union of these tools induced a type of contact electrification known as the triboelectric effect. The researchers blasted the crystal plate with an 85-micron-diameter jet of water (narrower than a human hair) from a specially designed nozzle. The water hit the crystal plate with a pressure of 632.7 kilograms of force per centimeter (9,000 pounds per square inch), generating an impact velocity of around 305 meters per second (1,000 feet per second) -- as fast as a bullet from a handgun. Plasma was formed as a result of the creation of an electric charge when the water hit the crystal surface. The flow of electrons from the point of contact ionizes the molecules and atoms in the gas area surrounding the water's surface, forming a donut-shaped glowing plasma that's dozens of microns in diameter. Caltech posted a video of the plasma ring on their YouTube channel.

23 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. 1950s technology by boudie2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Gharib’s team also noticed another peculiar phenomenon: the plasma ring emitted distinct radio frequencies, as evidenced by the high levels of static the engineers’ mobile phones picked up during the experiment. “That’s never been seen before. We think it’s because of the piezo properties of the materials that we used in our experiments,” Pereira explained."
    Sounds to me like he's never heard of the plasma speaker.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:1950s technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm an electrical engineer.

      First of all I want to clarify that they mean static noise, not static charge. The first one is the "waterfally" sound you get from your regular AM/FM radio not tuned into a channel. The second one is what happen when you rub a balloon against a cat.

      There is no physical difference between a wire and an antenna. If you want to design an antenna you can just cut a wire to an appropriate length (Or any length, it doesn't have to be a good antenna to work as one.)
      Every trace on a PCB, like the ones between the CPU and the the memory, or the ones to the speaker works exactly like antennas.

      You usually don't care about this property of wires and traces since the impact of the radio waves is so insignificant.
      The signals you work with are much stronger than the impact the radio waves have.

      So what happened here is probably that there is a DA converter in the phone that requires some filtering to not sound like crap and that filter is placed too far away from the amplifier for the speaker. The trace between the filter and the driver picked up radio noise from the plasma.
      The DA is probably integrated into the CPU so they couldn't move it closer to the amplifier and if they moved the filter closer to the amplifier they would emit more radio signals themselves.
      You typically won't encounter open air plasmas in your daily life so it isn't really a big problem.

      There is a lot more to talk about here, but I hope this clarifies what the two of them has to do with each other sufficiently for now.

    2. Re:1950s technology by arth1 · · Score: 2

      First of all I want to clarify that they mean static noise, not static charge. The first one is the "waterfally" sound you get from your regular AM/FM radio not tuned into a channel. The second one is what happen when you rub a balloon against a cat.

      A hiss, a bang, a squeal, a slash, a scream?

    3. Re:1950s technology by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But that is far from the only possible source of RF noise

      Indeed.
      You're hitting crystal plates with a water jet. Oscillating crystals causing electromagnetic noise was pretty much how radio transmitters were born.

    4. Re:1950s technology by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2

      Oh boy I'm so looking forward to the invention of the steam engine but not before they unveil the Spinning Jenny. Seriously what the fuck are you talking about?

      All the "breakthrough" tech coming out in the realm of quantum mechanics and such today was discovered in the 60's. The black projects run by the government are so far beyond the science known in the civilian world it's absurd. It might help if you look up the definition of the term "black project" and find the associated (known) budgets (i.e. missing money.) Take all the scientific funding from every nation combined over the last several decades, now multiply it by about 10. That's the difference between the civilian sciences and the black budget sciences (monetarily at least, probably a bit more since the civilian side keeps retracing the black project side.)

  2. "kilograms of force" by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The hell kind of weird bastardized units are these writers using? Kilograms are mass. Newtons are force. Do you mean 9.8N, which is about the force of 1kg under 1g (g-force, not grams) of acceleration?

    --
    -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
    "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    1. Re:"kilograms of force" by skullandbones99 · · Score: 2

      On the moon your mass would still be 85kg.

      Force (Netwons) = mass (kilograms) x acceleration (metres per second per second)

      The moon has 1/6 the acceleration due to gravity than the earth:

      On the surface of the earth, acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 m/s/s.

      On the surface of the moon. acceleration due to gravity is 1.620 m/s/s.

      Therefore your weight is as follows:

      On Earth, your weight (force) = 85 x 9.81 = 834 Newtons

      On the moon, your weight (force) = 85 x 1.620 = 138 Newtons

      One of the reasons you say your "weight is 14kg on the moon" is because conceptually it is easier to understand what 14kg is than what 138 Newtons is. But scientifically speaking weight is not measured in kg.

      When you tell your doctor your weight, you are actually telling your doctor your mass. For example in the UK, doctors use the BMI (Body Mass Index) to calculate how overweight you are but despite mass being mentioned in the term they ask for your "weight" in kilograms, doh!

    2. Re:"kilograms of force" by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      Actually kilograms, i.e. weight, are never a unit of mass.

      Found the DeVry grad!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:"kilograms of force" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The water hit the crystal plate with a pressure of 632.7 kilograms of force per centimeter (9,000 pounds per square inch)

      Everyone seems to have missed the really important detail.

      The strange quantum effect which changes the dimensionality of the effect from 2D to 1D depending on the units used to make the measurement.

    4. Re:"kilograms of force" by mark-t · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The kilogram and kilogram-force are different units, even if the latter often gets lazily abbreviated in name to the former

      That is true, yes. It would be more correct for me to say that the *names* of the units are the same than it to just say (as I had) that the units are the same, but for some reason I didn't think of putting it that way when I was responding, above.

      As for Newton having nothing to do with how the kilogram came to be defined today, I know that Newton actually used imperial units. The kilogram-force unit is basically just a metric equivalent to the notion of the concept of pounds of force, which would have actually been the primary expression for the notion of force prior to Newton (long before it was understood that force was actually the product of acceleration and mass, and not just the mass). The creation of the SI unit called a Newton deprecated the notion of using a weight/mass unit to describe force entirely, but the reference to the force experienced by a given mass at 1G persisted, and is still frequently used because it is often more intuitively understood by people without a physics background.

      So the expression "kilograms of force" always explicitly refers to the kilogram-force unit, but it is redundant to say that so many kilograms-force of force were used to do work XYZ, so the 'force' suffix on the unit is often dropped from the unit name itself. Since the word appears almost immediately afterwards anyways, no ambiguity about the term's usage remains, but when you see "pounds of force" or "kilograms of force", the actual units being measured to are pound-force and kilogram-force.

    5. Re:"kilograms of force" by ortholattice · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What is curious is that they needed precisely 632.7 kilograms of force per centimeter [sic], to 4 significant figures. Even more remarkable is that this evaluates to almost exactly 9,000 pounds per square inch (8999.1 psi to be precise).

  3. What sort of quartz - by sheramil · · Score: 2

    .. is "either quartz", and did anyone else find their youtube video a little short of details?

  4. Holy shit basic grammar by Khyber · · Score: 2

    Either/or, Neither/nor.

    Come the fuck on. Try being less lazy than using a simple spelling check.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  5. Re:Now the must move elsewhere to continue work by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you had told me half a century ago that there could be any land that might eclipse the US in terms of technology and progress, I would have called you insane. Remember? The time when the US built those huge rockets to go where nobody has gone before?

    20 years ago I would probably have said something along the lines of "Yeah, Japan. but they can't compete in raw production power"

    Today, I'd probably ask if there is actually still any research and development done in the US, and whether there is actually any US-owned corporation left, or whether the Chinese are finally done taking over.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Measurements! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "generating an impact velocity of around 305 meters per second (1,000 feet per second)"

    Ok, the actual science was done measuring meters per second, the press release rounds it to a nice round number of 1000f/s for American audience, and then that rounded number is converted to a quite exact figure of 305m/s.

    In the actual paper, the experiment was done with a wide range of velocities. Over 200 m/s was required velocity to generate the effect.

  7. u haz grammer by zifn4b · · Score: 2

    made from either quartz and lithium niobate

    1) Either quartz or niobate? 2) Quartz and niobate? 3) Either quartz and niobate or _____?

    --
    We'll make great pets
  8. Re:Now the must move elsewhere to continue work by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    You might also remember that a lot more happened in the 60s that made the US the top of the world science hub. But let's stay with the moonshot, while the engineering was important, the whole mission hung on WAY more than the ability to make a large rocket go up. There's logistics, process management, raw manpower and on top of all an economy to power the whole deal. Frankly, making a rocket go up was certainly the most visible of the whole endeavor, but in the end only the tip of the iceberg.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  9. Re:632.7 kilograms of force by Megane · · Score: 3, Funny

    How long is that in parsecs? I want to figure out how many Kessel runs that is.

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  10. WTF /. by drewsup · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I submitted this FOUR DAYS AGO, with links to the Caltech aticle!

    1. Re:WTF /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      It took 4 days to put all those errors in the summary.

  11. kilograms as a unit of force... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're not. Get over it.

    SI has a perfectly good unit of force (the newton). It will be really great when SI advocates actually start using SI, rather than bastardizing it with things like "kilograms of force"....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    1. Re:kilograms as a unit of force... by iggymanz · · Score: 2

      they meant kilogram-equivalents of force, which is valid, you can even buy pressure gauges using those.

  12. "you could use it for energy storage" by Z80a · · Score: 2

    Oh yes,i barely can wait for a galaxy note phone with a plasma ring as it's battery.
    Nothing possibly could go wrong.