What ~does~ a Plasma Rifle shoot, anyway?

By: Parker Wilhelm

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Despite taking on the supernatural forces of Hell, a large portion of the DOOM Slayer’s arsenal is scientifically easy to comprehend. Sure, otherworldy elements like the laser-bladed Crucible or the jaw-busting Berserker Upgrade are beyond our mortal understanding, but we know how and why the buckshot in the Super Shotgun goes boom.

DOOM’s Plasma Rifle, however, is just enough a blend of real-life technology and sci-fi fantasy to get us wondering – what exactly is the Plasma Rifle doing when it vaporizes demons with its bright blue orbs of destruction?

What is plasma?

R.J. Goldston and P.H. Rutherford’s “Introduction to Plasma Physics” writes that ‘plasma’ is often considered the “fourth state of matter” after solid, liquids and gasses. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir coined the term in 1928 after the Ancient Greek word for ‘moldable substance’ or ‘jelly.’

Broadly speaking, plasma can mean one of two things. Firstly, plasma can refer to the fluid portion of a colloidal suspension. Colloids are mixtures of one kind of substance microscopically mixed in with another, often of a different state of matter.

For example, milk is technically not a liquid, but a colloid made of semisolid fat globules dispersed in a solution of water. If you’ve ever heard of someone donating plasma at a blood bank, it’s not an ammo pickup – blood is also a colloid and they’re donating the liquid that solid red blood cells are suspended in.

The other, more relevant definition of plasma is an ionized gas often created artificially by subjecting gas to high temperatures or a strong electromagnetic field. We’re almost certain this is the kind of plasma the Plasma Rifle uses to fire its superheated balls of death, unless the UAC secretly filled the thing up with milk this whole time.

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