Dusty plasma in the universe and in the laboratory

In 1981, the Voyager 2 space probe took intriguing images of Saturn’s rings as it passed by the giant planet on its way to Uranus.

The images showed what looked like ghostly “spokes” moving on the rings, much like the spokes of a bicycle wheel as it turns. After some head-scratching, scientists realized that the Saturnian spokes most likely were tiny specks of dust moving around the rings due to electric and magnetic forces. These forces result from electrically charged gases known as plasma.

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Researchers think that 99 percent of the matter in our universe is in a plasma state. Many processes that occur in the universe are due in part to the presence of plasma.

One place to find dusty plasma is in Earth’s atmosphere, where they’re generated when meteoroids enter the atmosphere’s upper layers at speeds of several kilometers per second. Researchers study them with specialized radars that can detect the ball of plasma that forms around the meteroids as they heat up due to friction with the air.

Photo taken by astronauts of noctilucent clouds in Earth’s atmosphere above the midnight sun (above the blue layer) At high geographic latitudes (between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator) an intriguing phenomenon occurs. Clouds made of tiny ice crystals and dust appear at an altitude of about 80 kilometers during the summer months. Known as noctilucent clouds, they are too thin to be visible in daylight, but they glow before sunrise or after sunset when the sun is below the horizon. Solid swimmers in an electrical sea Dusty plasma, also called complex plasma, contains small, solid particles distributed throughout the ionized gas. These particles can have the shape of a sphere, a rod or an irregular “pancake.” The reason dusty plasma are very interesting, and even technologically valuable, comes down to the fact that the dust particles themselves can become electrically charged. Dusty Plasma