: The problem I have with this is that plasma is supposed to be the state
: matter reaches at its highest temperature (fire and electricity are really
: hot carbon and oxygen, or something). Cool plasma isn't an unfeasible and
: it's kind of a cool idea (pun not intended), but in order to make a
: plasma, you need to heat up a gas that's even colder... so those fusion
: batteries could be full of freezing gas? "Coldness" is how slow
: the atoms/molecules are moving, and there is such a thing as absolute
: zero, so what are the boundaries for this stuff existing? Having both
: plasma and water properties seems nonsensical with this logic, but there
: is such a thing as dry ice (a type of matter that has no liquid state), so
: maybe something interesting can happen where there's such a thing as
: viscous plasma.
: But I kinda just picture the plasma as being an electric shot (or something
: similar to electricity) as it does a good job frying the hunters and
: juggernauts.
That's why I said some plasma-like exotic state of matter. There are more phases of matter than just a linear progression of solid, liquid, gas, plasma, and different materials exhibit different kinds of phases. I'm positing, with lots of hand-waving acknowledged, that whatever futury technology powers the fusion pistol (and possibly other alien energy weapons too) utilizes some currently-unknown phase of some kind of substance that, like a plasma, has all of the nuclei stripped of their electrons (ionized; this is actually the defining characteristic of a plasma), but then, somehow, has those nuclei bound together into a fixed volume like a liquid (some kind of weird interaction with the gluon field, perhaps?), despite their electrostatic repulsion, and existing at a low temperature. This would give us the "globs" that fusion bolts and other energy weapons seem to shoot, stuck into an amorphous but fixed volume like a liquid (which is what makes them globby, rather than flamey), but make such globs inherently charged (at least, if the electrons were not also bound by whatever magic holds the ionized nuclei together), which would induce electric current upon impact, causing damage, but not thermal damage, as would be expected of a hot plasma.
A quick Google search suggests that there is actually research into something being called a cold plasma (completely unrelated to cold fusion, BTW), more technically a "nonthermal plasma", which appears to be created by (somehow) adding energy to the electrons but not the nuclei of a gas, leaving near-room-temperature ionized nuclei and a lot of hot electrons flying away elsewhere, for use in sterilizing foods unsuitable to chemical or thermal sterilization. Doesn't sound like it would stay contained into globs like we'd need for a plasma pistol, though, but that's where magic exotic phases of matter get hand-waved in.
