Plasma - Blog Posts

Imagine #2:

I was thinking about pirate!au for ninjago, and...

Imagine –

we have 2 the most dangerous pirate ships in the seven seas, called "Phoenix" and "Raiju". And there is two captans, well you can know them. It's obviously Kai and Jay, and they are rivals. Well, you know, – from "hate" to "love" scenario ;).

And of course we have Zane and Cole here. Zane is Jay's right hand man and Cole is Kai's right hand man. And they are basically baby-sitting this two "cool" captain-dorks.

And look, in some kind of way, Zane and Cole get trapped in somewhere together. And they where like "oh, this guy again. I think I need to hate him?? I will just sit here in silence" and after a couple of hours(days, maybe??) of sitting there they will find a lot in common. Like baby-sitting this two idiots and getting their asses out of somewhere, and they will be like "hmm, I kinda like this guy, even if I have to hate him". And after this they would meet much more often than it should be🤔. And after this "accidents" they would be meeting in the purposes, for "just to hang out with someone who can understand me". And then it will grow into something more intimate. Running somewhere together, cuddles, making up more and more things just to see each other often. And first kiss of course. Well, everything is like it should be.

And there goes our "rivals", that "hate" each other. They just being two sassy bastards that are having nice time mocking of each other. But deep inside, they have feelings for each other that they can't understand. And they becaming more and more furious about it. Like "That sh*t hurts! What the hell is this?! Why I'm so flustered around this idiot!? F*ck it!". And sometimes they will just sit alone, and secretly thinking about each other, and they will be sad because of...something? And they will hate each other even more because of this mixed feelings. And then there would be some "moment", when thy will learn about love between their right hand men, at would be like "you betrayed me!" and will have more hate for the other. And after all of this, this two captain-dorks will find out that they actually in love with each other(not without some help from their friends, a lot of help actually. They're just emotional llove-stuck idiots) and would be like "oh". And then goes kissing, cuddling, -bitting-, hugging, crying their souls out for each other at night, and a lot of other cute things💕

Just a lot of angst and fluff and smut and other things!♥️

What do you think?

@rinas-ninjas @kara-is-so-ninja @nightlybirdie

Don't leave a guy hanging!

A couple of weeks ago I donated platelets for the first time after years of donating whole blood and plasma.  Everything seemed to go just fine until today. I got call asking if I could donate platelets again and the the person leaving the message said, "No, wait there was a problem with the platelets, could you donate whole blood or plasma instead." 

That was it.  There was no explanation of what the "problem" was.  The woman just left me hanging.  Come on, you can't leave a message like that without explaining the nature of the "problem."

I shot the Blood Source an E-mail and got a quick response saying that my platelet count was in the normal range, but just too low for donating on their current machines.  Fine, in the future you could tell me that right up front instead of leaving me hanging.

New Sun Science Stamps from the U.S. Postal Service

To start off the summer, the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of stamps showcasing views of the Sun from our Solar Dynamics Observatory!

Since its launch in 2010, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (or SDO) has kept up a near-constant watch on the Sun from its vantage point in orbit around Earth. SDO watches the Sun in more than 10 different types of light, including some that are absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere so can only be seen from space. These different types of light allow scientists to study different parts of the Sun – from its surface to its atmosphere – and better understand the solar activity that can affect our technology on Earth and in space.

The new set of stamps features 10 images from SDO. Most of these images are in extreme ultraviolet light, which is invisible to human eyes.

Let’s explore the science behind some of the stamps!

Coronal hole (May 2016)

The dark area capping the northern polar region of the Sun is a coronal hole, a magnetically open area on the Sun from which high-speed solar wind escapes into space. Such high-speed solar wind streams can spark magnificent auroral displays on Earth when they collide with our planet’s magnetic field.

Solar flare (August 2011)

The bright flash on the Sun’s upper right is a powerful solar flare. Solar flares are bursts of light and energy that can disturb the part of Earth’s atmosphere where GPS and radio signals travel.

Active Sun (October 2014)

This view highlights the many active regions dotting the Sun’s surface. Active regions are areas of intense and complex magnetic fields on the Sun – linked to sunspots – that are prone to erupting with solar flares or explosions of material called coronal mass ejections.

Plasma blast (August 2012)

These images show a burst of material from the Sun, called a coronal mass ejection. These eruptions of magnetized solar material can create space weather effects on Earth when they collide with our planet’s magnetosphere, or magnetic environment – including aurora, satellite disruptions, and, when extreme, even power outages.

Coronal loops (July 2012)

These images show evolving coronal loops across the limb and disk of the Sun. Just days after these images were taken, the Sun unleashed a powerful solar flare.

Coronal loops are often found over sunspots and active regions, which are areas of intense and complex magnetic fields on the Sun.

Sunspots (October 2014)

This view in visible light – the type of light we can see – shows a cluster of sunspots near the center of the Sun. Sunspots appear dark because they are relatively cool compared to surrounding material, a consequence of the way their extremely dense magnetic field prevents heated material from rising to the solar surface.

For more Sun science, follow NASA Sun on Twitter, on Facebook, or on the web.

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Weird Magnetic Behavior in Space

In between the planets, stars and other bits of rock and dust, space seems pretty much empty. But the super-spread out matter that is there follows a different set of rules than what we know here on Earth.

For the most part, what we think of as empty space is filled with plasma. Plasma is ionized gas, where electrons have split off from positive ions, creating a sea of charged particles. In most of space, this plasma is so thin and spread out that space is still about a thousand times emptier than the vacuums we can create on Earth. Even still, plasma is often the only thing out there in vast swaths of space — and its unique characteristics mean that it interacts with electric and magnetic fields in complicated ways that we are just beginning to understand.

Five years ago, we launched a quartet of satellites to study one of the most important yet most elusive behaviors of that material in space — a kind of magnetic explosion that had never before been adequately studied up close, called magnetic reconnection. Here are five of the ways the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS) has helped us study this intriguing magnetic phenomenon.

1. Seeing magnetic explosions up close

Magnetic reconnection is the explosive snapping and forging of magnetic fields, a process that can only happen in plasmas — and it's at the heart of space weather storms that manifest around Earth.

When the Sun launches clouds of solar material — which is also made of plasma — toward Earth, the magnetic field embedded within the material collides with Earth's huge global magnetic field. This sets off magnetic reconnection that injects energy into near-Earth space, triggering a host of effects — induced electric currents that can harm power grids, to changes in the upper atmosphere that can affect satellites, to rains of particles into the atmosphere that can cause the glow of the aurora.  

Though scientists had theorized about magnetic reconnection for decades, we'd never had a chance to study it on the small scales at which it occurs. Determining how magnetic reconnection works was one of the key jobs MMS was tasked with — and the mission quickly delivered. Using instruments that measured 100 times faster than previous missions, the MMS observations quickly determined which of several 50-year-old theories about magnetic reconnection were correct. It also showed how the physics of electrons dominates the process — a subject of debate before the launch.

2. Finding explosions in surprising new places

In the five years after launch, MMS made over a thousand trips around Earth, passing through countless magnetic reconnection events. It saw magnetic reconnection where scientists first expected it: at the nose of Earth's magnetic field, and far behind Earth, away from the Sun. But it also found this process in some unexpected places — including a region thought to be too tumultuous for magnetic reconnection to happen.

As solar material speeds away from the Sun in a flow called the solar wind, it piles up as it encounters Earth's magnetic field, creating a turbulent region called the magnetosheath. Scientists had only seen magnetic reconnection happening in relatively calm regions of space, and they weren't sure if this process could even happen in such a chaotic place. But MMS' precise measurements revealed that magnetic reconnection happens even in the magnetosheath.  

MMS also spotted magnetic reconnection happening in giant magnetic tubes, leftover from earlier magnetic explosions, and in plasma vortices shaped like ocean waves — based on the mission's observations, it seems magnetic reconnection is virtually ubiquitous in any place where opposing magnetic fields in a plasma meet.  

3. How energy is transferred

Magnetic reconnection is one of the major ways that energy is transferred in plasma throughout the universe — and the MMS mission discovered that tiny electrons hold the key to this process.

Electrons in a strong magnetic field usually exhibit a simple behavior: They spin tight spirals along the magnetic field. In a weaker field region, where the direction of the magnetic field reverses, the electrons go freestyle — bouncing and wagging back and forth in a type of movement called Speiser motion.

Flying just 4.5 miles apart, the MMS spacecraft measured what happens in a magnetic field with intermediate strength: These electrons dance a hybrid, meandering motion — spiraling and bouncing about before being ejected from the region. This takes away some of the magnetic field’s energy.

4. Surpassing computer simulations

Before we had direct measurements from the MMS mission, computer simulations were the best tool scientists had to study plasma's unusual magnetic behavior in space. But MMS' data has revealed that these processes are even more surprising than we thought — showing us new electron-scale physics that computer simulations are still trying to catch up with. Having such detailed data has spurred theoretical physicists to rethink their models and understand the specific mechanisms behind magnetic reconnection in unexpected ways. 

5. In deep space & nuclear reactions

Although MMS studies plasma near Earth, what we learn helps us understand plasma everywhere. In space, magnetic reconnection happens in explosions on the Sun, in supernovas, and near black holes.

These magnetic explosions also happen on Earth, but only under the most extreme circumstances: for example, in nuclear fusion experiments. MMS' measurements of plasma's behavior are helping scientists better understand and potentially control magnetic reconnection, which may lead to improved nuclear fusion techniques to generate energy more efficiently.

This quartet of spacecraft was originally designed for a two-year mission, and they still have plenty of fuel left — meaning we have the chance to keep uncovering new facets of plasma's intriguing behavior for years to come. Keep up with the latest on the mission at nasa.gov/mms.

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