Managed Plasma Environment Framework: A Structured and Falsifiable Theoretical Architecture for Understanding Plasma Behaviour in Microgravity

Here is the updated Zenodo description for MPE-1 v4.2: MPE Framework v4.2 — Managed Plasma Environment Paper 1 in the MPE Series · AEMS LLC · Griffiths Canon Research Group · June 2026 Plasma has always been treated as something to be managed around — a by-product of hardware, a medium to be mitigated, a working fluid to be exploited and discarded. This paper proposes something different: that plasma, in microgravity, can be treated as a governed medium in its own right — shaped, bounded, and maintained without physical walls, under explicit supervisory control. The Managed Plasma Environment (MPE) framework is the foundational theoretical architecture for this idea. It defines the physical conditions, field-topology constraints, control requirements, and governance structures that allow a free-floating plasma domain to behave as a controllable operational medium in microgravity — not a passive cloud, but a governed system with defined boundaries, predictable responses, and explicit failure modes. The key physical insight is gravitational: below approximately 10⁻⁴ g₀, buoyancy-driven convection is suppressed and electromagnetic forces dominate macroscopic plasma structure. A field-dominated plasma can be shaped by the fields that govern it. The MPE framework formalises that principle and makes it falsifiable. The framework delivers a three-tier DIGSP governance architecture — global supervisory constraints at the slow timescale, boundary geometry and field topology management at the intermediate timescale, and local plasma conditioning at nanosecond-to-microsecond bandwidth — together with six explicit falsifiable predictions, each carrying a governing equation, a measurable quantity, a numerical threshold, and a binary failure criterion. The sixth prediction, added in this revision, is derived directly from the 2025 PK-4 filamentary ordering result: if structural transition in a plasma boundary is not triggered by field topology change at constant field magnitude, the field-topology governance claim is falsified. Two 2024–2025 results from the ISS PK-4 facility provide the strongest external support yet. Ariel et al. (2025) confirmed that field-aligned filaments and nested layered structures in microgravity dusty plasma are governed by field interaction-potential geometry rather than field strength alone — directly supporting the MPE's central field-topology claim. Knapek et al. (2024) demonstrated that pulsed RF scheduling achieves void-free plasma domain geometry in microgravity hardware — directly supporting the MPE Tier-1 field scheduling mechanism. Both are structural and governance analogues for the MPE's non-dusty plasma regime; neither constitutes formal validation of the framework. This revision also introduces an explicit scope boundary: the MPE framework addresses free-floating plasma domains in sustained microgravity. It does not address magnetically confined fusion plasmas, atmospheric-pressure discharges, or planetary magnetospheres. It does not present engineering designs or hardware specifications. Its claims are confined to the level of plasma physics, field topology, and control theory — the level at which the six falsifiable predictions can be tested. A quantitative field-dominance calculation for the terrestrial industrial application (Curvature-Stabilised Microwave Methane Cracker) demonstrates that at bench-scale conditions, EM forces dominate gravity at the plasma reaction boundary by six to seven orders of magnitude — confirming that the same MPE governance substrate operates in terrestrial industrial contexts when field intensity achieves the dominance that microgravity achieves by suppressing gravity. MPE-1 is the substrate from which the series builds. MPE-2 extends the linear governance framework into the nonlinear domain. MPE-3 and MPE-4 map the REMN and CSFR architectures as Managed Plasma Environments. MPE-7 and MPE-11 establish their internal dynamics. Each subsequent paper depends on MPE-1; MPE-1 depends on none of them. Keywords: managed plasma environment, microgravity plasma, electromagnetic governance, plasma boundary control, DIGSP, field-topology, ISS PK-4, drift-wave suppression, Griffiths Canon, falsifiable framework Author: W. Griffiths, AEMS LLC / Griffiths Canon Research Group, Auckland, New Zealand ORCID: 0009-0009-4905-7909 Series: MPE-1 of the Managed Plasma Environment Series Related: MPE-2 (MNLP v2), MPE-4 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19649231), MPE-11 (CSFR Internal Dynamics) Part of: the Griffiths Canon — peer-reviewed works published in the Acceleron Aerospace Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2026), spanning domestic hydrogen combustion through deep-space propulsion and artificial-gravity habitats under a single unified field-governance framework.