Plasma is the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid, and gas. I've been designing ion sources for over thirty years, and plasma really is physics-based alchemy at its finest, hence my public internet handle is a horrible pun: ionsourcerer reflecting science and alchemy in one term.
I'm working on the quantum mechanics that make boron the weirdest element in the Periodic Table, because it appears to have absolutely no concern for the laws of physics.
As an experimentalist, I have seen more utterly _impossible_ things 'appear' to physically self-assemble according to some radically different set of laws than we are used to.
However, being an old fart, I'm convinced that no matter how bizarre, physical materials follow the established principles of Classical Physics..., at least at the traditionally accepted bulk atomic scale.
When you get down to the nanoscale and beyond, quantum effects start kicking in and eventually dominating physical matter in ways no one could have _possibly_ 'imagined' ten years ago.
The same rules still apply, but you can never be sure which ones apply, so you have to interpret them a bit differently and be willing to accept things which presently make no sense at all... except in the 'theoretical' models many of which can not be experimentally verified since the investigator and the experiment change everything just by being there.
It has taken me years to get to the point where I have learned enough about quantum mechanics to communicate in the 'language' everyone has been forced to invent out of sheer necessity.
I suppose it's like moving to a place where a language you have never heard before is spoken, and the local customs are a complete mystery, eventually you begin to start thinking in that language
and and assimilate the regional customs.
Of course boron refuses to be normal at this scale either, but it begins to appear more like the local 'normal' which is already pretty weird.
The less you 'know' about boron the better because you don't have any presuppositions to overcome.
Fun Time is over and I have to get back to work.
A nice discussion seems to be evolving.
Cheers,
b.
