Plasma as a “charged fluid” (and why it’s hard)

5:49>> Yeah. They like the deep dives, and it's going to get technical, >> but I'm going to walk you through it. Okay. >> Okay. >> And hopefully we can bring everyone along. So, plasma physics. >> Yes. Plasma is like more than 90% of the observable universe. The stuff that gives off light. Okay? Not on Earth. On Earth, most of the stuff is not plasma. But plasma is effectively when you get so high temperature and so high energy that the electrons leave the atoms, right? >> Okay. you're at such an energy scale where it's just it's fine if the electrons just go out on their own and you get this kind of ionized gas where the the gas itself is charged and

6:30there's no neutral atoms anymore. Okay? That's the stuff that's inside the sun. That's the stuff that's in the interstellar medium. And again, more than 90% of the visible universe is plasma. When we look out into the night sky, we're seeing stars. Most of that stuff is plasma. Okay? When we look at the sun, most of that stuff is plasma. Okay? And it's governed by the interaction of fluid and electromagnetic fields. >> This is what's very interesting about plasma physics is the mathematics becomes immediately non-trivial. [laughter]

7:12Okay? It's like extremely hard because fluids by itself is a very hard thing. >> Oh, which we've discussed for example just like simulating fluid dynamics is