Plasma meaning 'moldable substance' is one of the four fundamental states of matter, and was first described by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s. It consists of a gas of ions, atoms which have some of their orbital electrons removed, and free electrons. Plasma can be artificially generated by heating or subjecting a neutral gas to a strong electromagnetic field to the point where an ionized gaseous substance becomes increasingly electrically conductive, and long-range electromagnetic fields dominate the behaviour of the matter.