What Causes Lightning and Thunder?
Zap! You just touched a metal doorknob after shuffling your rubber-soled feet across the carpet. Yipes! You’ve been struck by lightning! Well, not really, but it’s the same idea.
Your rubber-soled shoes picked up stray electrons from the carpet. Those electrons built up on your shoes giving them a static charge.
(Static means not moving.) Static charges are always “looking” for the first opportunity to “escape,” or discharge.
Your contact with a metal doorknob—or car door handle or anything that conducts electricity—presents that opportunity and the excess electrons jump at the chance.
What causes lightning?
So, do thunderclouds have rubber shoes? Not exactly, but there is a lot of shuffling going on inside the cloud.
Lightning begins as static charges in a rain cloud. Winds inside the cloud are very turbulent. Water droplets in the bottom part of the cloud are caught in the updrafts and lifted to great heights where the much colder atmosphere freezes them. Meanwhile, downdrafts in the cloud push ice and hail down from the top of the cloud. Where the ice going down meets the water coming up, electrons are stripped off.
It’s a little more complicated than that, but what results is a cloud with a negatively charged bottom and a positively charged top. These electrical fields become incredibly strong, with the atmosphere acting as an insulator between them in the cloud.
When the strength of the charge overpowers the insulating properties of the atmosphere, Z-Z-Z-ZAP! Lightning happens.
How does the lightning “know” where to discharge—or strike?
The electric field “looks” for a doorknob. Sort of. It looks for the closest and easiest path to release its charge. Often lightning occurs between clouds or inside a cloud.
But the lightning we usually care about most is the lightning that goes from clouds to ground—because that’s us!
As the storm moves over the ground, the strong negative charge in the cloud attracts positive charges in the ground. These positive charges move up into the tallest objects like trees, telephone poles, and houses. A “stepped leader” of negative charge descends from the cloud seeking out a path toward the ground. Although this phase of a lightning strike is too rapid for human eyes, it has been observed in slow-motion video.
As the negative charge gets close to the ground, a positive charge, called a streamer, reaches up to meet the negative charge. The channels connect and we see the lightning stroke. We may see several strokes using the same path, giving the lightning bolt a flickering appearance, before the electrical discharge is complete.
What causes thunder?
In a fraction of a second, lightning heats the air around it to incredible temperatures—as hot as 54,000 °F (30,000 °C). That’s five times hotter than the surface of the Sun!
The heated air expands explosively, creating a shockwave as the surrounding air is rapidly compressed. The air then contracts rapidly as it cools. This creates an initial CRACK sound, followed by rumbles as the column of air continues to vibrate.
If we are watching the sky, we see the lightning before we hear the thunder. That is because light travels much faster than sound waves. We can estimate the distance of the lightning by counting how many seconds it takes until we hear the thunder. It takes approximately 5 seconds for the sound to travel 1 mile. If the thunder follows the lightning almost instantly, you know the lightning is too close for comfort!
What does lightning look like from space?
Lightning observed by the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) illuminates the storms developing over southeast Texas on the morning of February 14, 2017.
Lightning is an important part of weather forecasting. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument on the GOES-R series satellites can detect lightning activity over nearly the whole Western Hemisphere.
Scientists use data from GOES-R series satellites, along with data from the Lightning Imaging Sensor on NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, to study lightning.
This complete picture of lightning at any given time will improve “now-casting” of dangerous thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, and flash floods.
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Herb Rose
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Positive charges are the protons in the nucleus of an atom, they do not move. The negative charge in the clouds push the electrons under the cloud away producing the positive charge on the Earth. When the negative charges ion the cloud is neutralized the electrons on the Earth surge back and then move upwards to the clouds as lightning. like a capacitor discharging.
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T. C. Clark
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Protons have been bombarded with low energy electrons which produced the data to say that protons are 3 quarks. High energy electrons produce data indicating many quarks and some anti-quarks along with gluons in a proton. This probe into protons will continue in the 2030’s when another machine is built to fire high energy electrons ….protons may be be as interesting and complicated as quasars…..science seems to only get more complex…..what’s in a quark?
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Tom
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I am constantly getting shocks when opening the car doors. I am afraid I will blow up the delicate electronics.
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Howdy
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“These positive charges move up into the tallest objects like trees, telephone poles, and houses.”
Then why does lightning still strike the sea, even in the presence of masts from water craft?
Seen a ‘thunderbolt’ yet? Beaded lightning? I mean real bead formation, not this, after-strike fade-out nonsense.
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Lit
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“These electrical fields become incredibly strong, with the atmosphere acting as an insulator between them in the cloud.”
This is the properties of a capacitor.
“A capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy in an electric field by virtue of accumulating electric charges on two close surfaces insulated from each other. It is a passive electronic component with two terminals.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor
In a capacitor charges move against a force field(gravity) and terminals(surface&clouds) are separated by a dielectric medium(air). When the electric field is strong enough, the dielectric field breaks down and there´s a discharge(lightning).
With 8 million lightning strikes a day, there´s no doubt we live on an electric planet. And more specifically, a capacitor. The interesting question is, what does the current and voltage look like? We know that there´s a potential of 400 000V between the surface and the edge of the atmosphere, but what´s the current? To measure a current you need to have the meter connected as a part of the circuit, or measure the field around the circuit, and then read the meter from outside the circuit. This is the problem, we ARE the circuit, we´re part of it. So we can´t stand outside of it and take a reading of the current. The current is hidden from us, because we´re part of the conductor. Earth´s heat emission is probably just residual energy, like the heat emitted by an electric resistor. The energy flow through Earth is much larger than that. The planet is electric, biological life is electric, the universe is electric.
I don´t make any claims, this is just speculation from the observed electrical properties of our planet.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Lit,
The electric properties in the atmosphere are not due to gases but evaporated water. When water absorbs heat, molecules split producing hydroxyl and hydrogen ions. The hydrogen ion joins with a water molecule to form a hydronium ion (H3O+) while the hydroxylation joins with water molecules to form a negatively large shell around the hydronium ion, forming a liquid crystal. The negative charge causes the crystal to be repelled by the negative charge of the Earth. As it rises it absorbs more energy and the walls of the crystal and negative charge increases. Because the kinetic energy molecules increase with increasing altitude (the colder temperature is the result of fewer molecules transferring energy to the thermometer) the liquid crystal reaches its second melt point at the top of the troposphere and the stored electric charge is neutralized releasing heat into space which causes the water to become a liquid with no external charge to levitate it. See Dr. Gerald Pollack’s experiments to see how heat causes crystal growth in water. (The Fourth Phase of Water)
Herb
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Howdy
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That would make the atmosphere a very good conductor, and poor dielectric Herb.
On the subject of crystals, are you aware of Dr. Masaru Emoto, and his work on the effect of thought on water and the crystals produced?
https://growingperson.com/water-consciousness-dr-masaru-emotos-water-experiment
@Lit, know of the leyden jar?
Current can still be measured, assuming one can assemble a suitably robust ammeter and stout shunt, and be in the right place to take a strike. The cloud/surface gap is not a constant, so the reading, if such reading could be obtained, would be of only relative use.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Howdy,
Wouldn’t it make it a poor conductor and a good insulator? Negatively charged spheres with a non conductive gas surrounding them would repel each other and inhibit the flow of electrons.
Herb
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Herb Rose
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Hi again Howdy,
The crystal structure of water would be affected by the fields around i, hence the memory of water.Any object submerged would act as a template as the crystal formed around it.Talking to water would effect the structure of the surface tension and so crystal structure.
Herb
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Edward
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Would like to learn more on this subject.
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Moffin
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When there is an increase in solar wind the increase in earth charge can be measured.
This here article explains differing mechanisms for generating Negative Air Ions, including the Lenard Effect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213340/
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Herb Rose
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Hi Edward,
Lightning is not the result of friction taking electrons from the surface of the Earth up into the clouds. If that were true there would be no lightning between clouds (very common) or lightning going up into the ionosphere (rare). Lightning is the flow of electrons from higher concentration to lower concentration.
Herb
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