Lightnings are phenomena of electrical discharge that happen whenever a great potential difference occurs between clouds, parts of a cloud, or between a cloud and the earth. If the discharge occurs between a cloud and the earth’s surface, the cloud possesses a negative charge, the soil underneath positive.
What mechanism gives rise to such big potential difference, and what other phenomenon is produced by it besides lightnings?
During storms, strong currents of warm and humid air ascend with velocities that can reach one hundred kilometers per hour (a few months ago in Australia a paraglider was unwillingly pulled about 10,000 meters above sea level by such a current).
In these currents of warm air a great power is involved. Evidently, it’s this phenomenon that in some way electrically charges the clouds. How?
It’s the same phenomenon that charges isolated materials when they get rubbed. It’s the one that sometimes makes us feel an electric shock in getting out of a car. The car is electrically isolated from the soil; as it moves, the air friction charges it. Another manifestation of this phenomenon occurs when we strongly rub a plastic bag against a wool dress. If we put afterward the bag above our head, the accumulated electric charge pulls our hair up. How does this phenomenon electrically charge the clouds?
The distribution of velocity, humidity, and temperature of the ascending air current is variable, and we can imagine it as a bunch of thin threads having different velocities, humidities and temperatures.
The rubbing that takes place between nearby threads with different speeds produces a transfer of electrons from the warmer threads to the colder ones. The overall effect is a transfer of negative electrons from the flow of ascending air to the surrounding regions, which gain a negative charge, while the rising air gets positively charged.
Because of this, huge potential differences get created between parts of a single cloud, or between nearby clouds, something of the order of several tens of millions volts. When these huge potential differences discharge, lightnings take place.
Not all the positive ions that are brought upward produce lightnings, though. What happens of the others? Since at high altitudes the atmosphere is a good electrical conductor, this upward draft of electric charges gets transferred over all the upper atmosphere, contributing to maintain it positively charged, while the lightnings transfer negative charges on the earth.
Therefore, the lightnings that hit the earth combined with the constant upward draft of positive charges act in such a way that a high potential difference is maintained between the entire earth’s surface and the upper atmosphere, which is of the order of a few hundreds of thousands volts, a potential difference, however, much lower than the one that produce lightnings.
Since in the average there are about three hundred active storms over the entire earth at any time of day and night, consequently through the terrestrial atmosphere constantly flows a tiny electric current.
In summary, the upward currents of moist and warm air electrically charge the clouds and the upper atmosphere. The discharge between clouds, or between clouds and soil occurs by means of lightnings, the one between the upper atmosphere and the earth’s surface through a tiny electric current that flows day and night.
From the same author:
Arguments related to ether and inertia:
— Relativity and the duration of time
— Earth’s velocity with respect to the ether
— The origin of the Minkowski metric
The leading time theory and the Compton effect:
— The leading time and the Compton effect
— Compton effect and uncertainty
— The dual aspect of the elementary particles
Astrophysics:
— The puzzle of the solar corona
Cosmology:
— On the origin and evolution of the universe
The following post provides a brief description of each argument:
June 13, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
[...] More at The Origins of Lightnings. [...]