Question: What is plasma (as a state of matter)?

Kinda Al-Hourani answered on 25 Jun 2013:

This isn’t my research area, but…

Plasma is one of the fundamental states of matter (like gas, liquid and solid materials) and is produced when a gas is heated to incredibly high temperatures (like at the centre of the sun). When this happens, the atoms or molecules making up the gas begin to lose or gain their electrons, meaning that they become either positively or negatively charged. It’s these charged particles that make up plasma. Unlike a gas, plasma is great at conducting electricity because it contains so many particles to carry the charge.