Dr. Patrick Vanraes is a researcher at PLASMANT, University of Antwerp. He focuses on the fundamental features of in-liquid plasma and plasma-liquid interaction, as well as the physics of liquid matter. His work involves experiments, simulations and extensive review of historic work. Our conversation starts with Dr. Vanraes' important finding that plasmas can be generated in liquids without a gas intermediate. Then we explore the implications of a liquid plasma sun for all of cosmology. After all, if gases truly cannot produce blackbody spectra - as has never been shown in a laboratory - then the cosmic microwave background radiation is overdue for a new explanation. Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

(00:05:49) Lightning in liquids

(00:11:11) Applied physics

(00:15:20) What is a plasma? liquid v. gas

(00:17:23) Patreon Ask

(00:28:12) Invitation to answer an open question

(00:35:21) The search problem in physics

(00:40:33) The marketplace of scientific ideas

(00:54:38) The arc of doing academic science

(01:03:42) Garage plasma research

(01:14:30) Paying for monastic science

(01:26:10) Some problems can't be solved in advance

(01:30:21) Narrative is king

(01:32:05) The liquid sun & Dr. Robitaille

(01:45:50) Metastable balance

(01:56:04) Scientific dieties

(02:14:41) Cosmology and liquid sun are incompatible

(02:20:46) Kirchoff's law

(02:28:54) Nothing mechanical in statistical mechanics

(02:35:12) Metastable undertainty

(02:42:00) Criteria for competing theories

(02:50:00) Science as dictatorship ruled by Nature

(02:58:59) Critical rate of change in understanding