Astronomy   View all facts   Glossary   Help

physical object > natural object > collection of particles > phase of matter > gas > plasma

plasma
subject			fact

plasma	has definition A completely ionized gas; the so-called fourth state of matter (besides solid, liquid, and gas) in which the temperature is too high for atoms as such to exist and which consists of free electrons and free atomic nuclei.
	is a kind of gas
gas	is a part of disk
physical object	has location or center of gravity
	has angular momentum
	has mass
	has velocity
	has momentum
	has temperature
	has volume
	has extent
	has material

Kinds of plasma :

• degenerate gas (5 facts) (Fermi gas) - A state of matter found in white dwarfs and other ultrahigh-density objects, in which the electrons follow Fermi-Dirac statistics. According to the classical laws of physics, the pressure of a gas is proportional to the temperature and the density. However, in 1926 Fermi and Dirac showed that if the density were high enough, departures from classical laws would occur, in that if at a given temperature the density is increased, the pressure increases more and more rapidly until it becomes independent of the temperature and is a function of the density only. When this point is reached, the gas is said to be degenerate., A gas of electrons (or, more generally, fermions) in which all the lowest quantum states are occupied. For such a gas, the pressure in the nonrelativistic limit is proportional to the 5/3 power of the density., A state of matter found in white dwarfs and other extremely dense objects, in which strong deviations from classical laws of physics occur. As the density increases at a given temperature, the pressure rises more and more rapidly, until it becomes independent of temperature and dependent on density alone. At this point, the gas is said to be degenerate.