HF Plasma toroid in xenon gas!

Hey everyone,
This video is the moment I successfully recreated the plasma toroid in xenon gas excited by a high frequency class e oscillator. It’s a very finicky phenomenon and I ended the video early unfortunately, but when I recreate it again, I will ensure to record for longer and experiment with it’s properties. The HF oscillator is a 10MHz class - e oscillator, similar to steve ward’s HFSSTC but without a secondary coil. I finally did it! Let me know any questions you have and I am making a video about it!

[@LabCoatz_Science]

Congrats dude, that's gotta be the coolest plasma discharge ever! Now you just have to make a full tutorial/demo so you can claim complete victory over all other high voltage channels, haha!

[@BackMacSci]

Thanks man!! I cant WAIT to make the video! It’s gonna be a banger and the science behind it is still relatively novel!

[@The_Ballo]

Better yet, figure out how to mass produce it so we can all have one

[@kingj.master1202]

@@The_Ballo nah, just do the video quietly =p so a few can capitalize on it/weaponize it

[@milespeterson5049]

I will build one!!!@@BackMacSci

[@dPanicz]

That's sick! And the fact that you can feel the excitement in the voice makes it even better :D

[@richgoza1956]

That's epic! There are special magnetometers which use an RF-excited ionized plasma as a medium to sense minute magnetic fluxes. An example of such a device is called an Atomic Vapor Cell used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology which are used in Brain-Computer-Interfaces. These atomic vapor cells are so sensitive that they can detect the magnetic Flix lines from the action-potential of a single firing neuron in-vivo, in-situ, and non-invasively. Excellent project! A++ I believe this would be great for use as a Atomic Vapor Cell type of Magnetometer.

[@BackMacSci]

Thanks! And cool!

[@Kavster92]

Can you provide a full workup of your circuit diagram and/or full method to replicate this? The noise when it turns on is for some reason incredibly endearing, it sounds almost as if the plasma itself is a living thing. Is it possible to modulate the plasma toroid using an audio signal. I want to see it react to music for some reason. I need to see it dance to music! Great video!

[@BackMacSci]

Thank you so much, Kav. That’s the plan!

[@restlessascension3260]

The excitement in his voice is awesome. Congrats

[@cedricsoares8277]

An induced circular electric field due to a varying magnetic field, using ionized gas as a secondary 1-loop coil that acts like a magnetically coupled transformer. Beautiful experiment BackMacSci.

[@cedricsoares8277]

By the way you should saperate your resonante circuit from the power circuit that drives the exitation coil, the plasma toiroid is coupled magnetically to your coil so it will alter your resonant system inductive reactance, making it unpredictable.

[@ok1lad159]

Congrats, that looks so cool! What is the working frequency?

[@voice-less]

That's just incredible, I can't believe I am only now seeing this.

[@TheSpectralArtisan]

Mannnn where’d you come across this wicked blub shaped vessel?? I’ve been messing around throwing argon into a chamber under vacuum, With some visually appealing results if I do say, in a different manner than yours but I’d love to be able to recreate your experiment!! That’s badass

[@jannikheidemann3805]

Looks handmade to me.

[@TECHOPC]

that sound !!!!!!

[@BackMacSci]

Yeah so unique! It’s like a muffled squeak

[@RicardoPenders]

@@BackMacSci it sounds similar to my plasma lamp when I put it near my tesla coil which is interesting, I havent seen such a plasma toroid forming spontaneous like that before which is very cool to say at least.

[@luke144]

I would like to see the wave form. Flyback transformers will make the same noises but this kind of sounds like HF square waves.

[@StarTrooper47]

Congrats your a freakin genius dude!!

[@EdwardTriesToScience]

lmao i thought by HF you meant hydrogen fluoride XD i do too much chem, this is quite cool!

[@BackMacSci]

Hahah i was wondering if anyone would think that

[@KC9UDX]

The 5G fear-mongerers prolly think it's all the same.

[@timetojit8917]

You gotta show schematics bro that's awesome

[@BackMacSci]

Ofc dude!

[@unknowntoall604]

Make a diy for this! absolutely amazing! Great work

[@leon13noelspy]

What power transistor did you use for this? Congrats on managing to pull this off by the way! Also what is the power draw roughly?

[@BackMacSci]

I am using an irfp260n and it pulls about 30W once the toroid is stabilized

[@leon13noelspy]

@@BackMacSci oh thats less than i expected. I find it really hard to find genuent irfp260 so i'll likely try it out using irf510 or some of the fake irf510 that i have laying around. Thank you!

[@jonslab9635]

subscribed and hit the bell, this is amazing dude!

[@sossololpipi9633]

i understand nothing of this but it looks awesome, plasma donut ftw

[@claudiuMisterys]

This is amazing!! I am thinking, idk if it is possible tho, if it could be controlled even more and with more accuracy, you could create plasma holograms. Succeeding to create frequencies so specific that the plasma modulates in the shape of a face or letters. Would be amazing

[@LQhristian]

Congrats, it works and looks awesome!!

[@luke144]

Subscribed. Fascinating! I've never seen this. Please try manipulating the toroid with permanent magnets!

[@steve_ancell]

That's some serious bulbage!

[@_shadow_1]

Bruh that's awesome👍

[@iam551]

Congrats dude!

[@KeizerSinbad]

I would LOVE to see what would happen if you had a way to vibrate the xenon gas at the same time. I don't know how well vibrating the actual tube with a speaker would work since the xenon gas likely isnt very dense.

[@richgoza1956]

Make it a plasma speaker.

[@coast-guard-1cargo-spectio552]

For I am of the so-hype-right-now! [:Brrup-brrup!!]

[@jasonrohman6311]

Mac you got to reveal the the tech in your toroid experiments I have some I sane ideas bur don't have a filamentless globe or diagram and list of your setup, would kill for it.

[@BackMacSci]

Thanks Jason, yeah I commissioned the globe from plasma artist, Wayne strattman for $350. The xenon gas in the globe is very expensive because noble gas production has taken a huge hit since plants in ukraine were destroyed. :(

[@derfacecrafter1869]

A steam punk style copper tube lamp would be....

[@BackMacSci]

yesss! you're thinking like me, i'd love to stylize this into a prop/art piece for me desk

[@kreynolds1123]

Im new to your channel. I see Inductivly coupled rf energy into the plasma. What I'm trying to wrap my head around is why the plasna toroid floats above the coil rather than where the field changes are greatest, nearest the coil. Buoyancy doesn't seem right in a low pressure gas. Maybe its this..... because of induction in plasma induction, the coil's magnetic field pushes off the plasma's magnetic field which pushes on the plasma. The plasma cant be too far away because the change in flux dies off quickly with distance. But neither does it like to be near the changing field that induced it. And, rather than create a small toroid in the plane of the coil, the plasma toroid appears to prefer to hover over the coil. I'm not sure what instabilities are inducing plasma toroid dancing effects. Do you have an idea?

[@BackMacSci]

Thanks for such an insightful comment. Check out the video called “10 inch globe xenon plasma toroid” or something like that. Its a video made by my friend with a channel name like “kcarakevska”. In the video he does this experiment with a 10 inch xenon globe at 15 torr and we see the toroid forms just at the plane of the coil. My theory for why the rising toroid occurs in this 6 inch globe is convection lifting the hotter plasma above the cooler gas. So yeah, basically buoyancy is our best guess.

[@kreynolds1123]

@@BackMacSci regarding plasma toroid in the plane of the the coil: Convection not working there? Convection is less effective when there is very low pressure. What was your pressure? I suspect the offset from the plane of the coil is due to some sort of magnetic effects rather than buoyancy. You could easily try putting the coil on top of the globe rather than below, and see if the plasma offset is pushed down. You'd be able to confirm or rule out convection. It might also be interesting to see how it behaves if the coil's plane were vertical rather than horizontal. Maybe there is something about the circumfrence of the plasma ir the coil with inductive and capacitive resonance preferring a certain circumfrence unavailable in the plane of your coil. Is there a DC bias in the coil?

[@BackMacSci]

@@kreynolds1123 there's no dc bias in the coil but I want to experiment with that in the future. Also, I have done the experiment where I put the coil above the globe and the toroid forms at the top of the globe, not repelled down. But then again I only did one trial of that experiment, so more testing is necessary. And I definitely need to try the vertical coil plane experiment. That is where I am really excited to see the result!

[@jamesparker1839]

I like your vids bro. Im an enthusiast myself. Just finished building my first solid state tesla coil based on Labcoatz Worlds Simplest Solid State Tesla Coil and am now building the Worlds Simplest QCW Tesla Coil that you and he built on your respective channels. I have a few shorts - ElectroGrav Labs - if youre interested. I was wondering, I'm very new to this and have been teaching myself on the fly- whats a good way to meet people locally who are into this? When i get stuck i have no one to ask, which kinda sucks cause it ends up being a bottleneck to my education. Im like a 40 year old carpenter- no one i know of is even remotely into high voltage or gravitics. I notice that all you Tesla coil guys (a half dozen or so names come to mind instantly ) seem to be friends- is that because youre all local to each other? P.S. When i finish the Ramped QCW coil a plasma toroid is next!!

[@BackMacSci]

Nice to meet you. We know each other mostly from commenting on each others videos or email. I only know one other tesla coiler in los angeles actually!

[@coyotedomino]

fucking magical

[@blzz42]

This is really cool. Kind of reminds of ball lightning.. I wonder, if you manipulated the toroid could you create a stable plasma ball?

[@cezarcatalin1406]

It would be pretty difficult since plasma does not want to hold spherical shapes for too long.

[@lirothen]

@@cezarcatalin1406 persistence of vision means you'd really just have to rotate the disk fast enough

[@cezarcatalin1406]

@@lirothen Sure, but how ? Plasma is much like a “sticky gas”, a fragile plasma ring is going to be teared apart by electromagnetic gradients long before it can be effectively pushed around. Maybe a rotating inductive field with multiple coils could do it, but then it will be surrounded by copper and not very visible.

[@keatoncampbell820]

I'm wondering if I can make a similar circuit for argon plasmas, as a welder I have access to silly amounts of it, and very beefy low voltage circuits. I have an old welder that I've been wanting to scrap the circuit components for a suitable plasma project. I'm not sure as to the feasibility of argon though, I haven't any math to use for this, having never done it before. What kind of voltage, frequency, etc would be ballpark for argon plasmas? Are we talking kV range or 0-50V, etc. Also this is nuts, and is a lot easier to start with than fusors!

[@BackMacSci]

Hi Keaton, I've spoken with plasma artists about the possibility of using other gases but the consensus seems to be that only xenon and krypton will form toroids in this setup. It doesn't mean you can't whip up this circuit and a bunch of argon globes at varying pressures to determine it for yourself though!

[@keatoncampbell820]

@@BackMacSci I'm addicted to the math! I assume ionization with argon will be relatively easy as the welder already can ionize argon at around 20v, but at something like minimum 30 amps. What kind of weird little board component do I need to create the oscillation? If I can get it to work I'll send you some info, I love playing with plasmas, I just usually do it to build things!

[@jannikheidemann3805]

@@BackMacSci What about radon? Maybe it even can start to ionize itself, being radioactive.

[@Flyingwigs]

@@keatoncampbell820 I know from my TIG welding experience that it usually needs a high voltage kick to start unless you are using a strike start. once the arc is established it only needs 9-20v to sustain at atmospheric pressure. HID bulbs in cars work in a similar fashion, they have a high voltage trigger circuit then the cars 12v takes over after that. his globe is at a very low pressure, something like 20-80 torr so you will need a very good pump to get to those levels.

[@keatoncampbell820]

@@Flyingwigs yes, the pump and the starting spark. These are both issues I can solve, along with evacuating the tube, but if the argon isn't a feasible plasma for a toroid....

[@Xeno_Bardock]

What if instead of just xenon gas, you have various mixture of gases and also metal vapors? Electrical engineer Eric Dollard had a burned-out bulb with everything inside vaporized, in which he was able to create fractal galaxies with two tesla coils 180 out of phase to each other. See Eric Dollard's video How To Create A Galaxy.

[@luke144]

I would love to see this taken further! I read an old Russian paper about a radon discharge tube that would form toroidal plasma discharges on its own. It supposedly would double the input radio frequency. In my opinion plasma physics and toroidal plasma discharge might be key near UV communication. 🤫

[@civicsr2cool]

🤘

[@TFlorian]

GG

[@karltrepka1627]

where do you get the xenon bulb/tube from .......congrats great experiment

[@BackMacSci]

Strattman design

[@Elixisty]

Got my sub!!

[@BackMacSci]

Great! Welcome to my science party!

[@jadenterry183]

Could you show how you made it because I wanna make one for this science project that's coming up and this is very interesting

[@BackMacSci]

I will get the tutorial up by the end of the month!

[@markos.5539]

So cute

[@carlhicks376]

I've probably missed it but do you have a build video showing a person could make one of these?

[@hunterturk1557]

bro do you have tiktok you will grow your following way faster there also how much does the whole set up cost

[@BackMacSci]

~$370

[@LQhristian]

Hmmm, perhaps with enough input energy it could become self-sustaining?? #Fusion reactors.

[@WimsicleStranger]

no

[@caeli5532]

Not bad

[@derarty4290]

I get stong "Hey Listen" vibes"

[@saundergroundmb9007]

★

[@markos.5539]

You have a pet Fire Halo

[@shakhawansalih5601]

can you give a detail what is those electronic parts from scratch , i would like to make it

[@BackMacSci]

I left a circuit schematic in the description of the video. The globe just needs to be 15 torr of xenon gas. Good luck!

[@jannikheidemann3805]

@@BackMacSci What was the room temperature aproximately?

[@maksimivlev9431]

It looks like you are about to create a time machine 😅

[@Barc0d3]

How much did u pay for that tube with gas in it?

[@markos.5539]

Its like a lil pet

[@jfcrow1]

what voltage?

[@nagihatoum9484]

Dudes trying to figure out how to ignite trillion dollars fusion reactors and this guy has it running on his desktop.

[@jannikheidemann3805]

Xenon doesn't even make energy when fused. Xenon nuclei are more than twice as heavy as those of iron.

[@WimsicleStranger]

except this is not a fusion reactor. it's "just" ionized xenon plasma

[@floridaman318]

Cool sound it makes when it forms. Very magical sounding. Your shrill voice, however, is not.

[@Mizai]

is this special

[@KC9UDX]

I don't mean to complain; but I wish you could clean up your language so I could show it to my kids.

[@cal7101]

Mute the video? Not sure what language needs to be "clean" though.

[@KC9UDX]

@@cal7101 can't remotely mute it on their TV.

[@cal7101]

@@KC9UDX What exactly was bad about his "language"?

[@WimsicleStranger]

Came here from your other video of it, where di you acquire the glass vessel? Is it homemade or did you buy it from somewhere? I want to make one myself since this is cool as hell, but cannot find a large vessel like that, or at least not with xenon gas in it!

[@connerlabs]

🤩