Upper atmospheric lightening sprites caught in 3D video

December 9, 2011 by Bob Yirka

Image credit: NHK / AGU

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sometimes in science, it’s easy to get caught up in the practical, to focus so heavily on the why’s and how’s of things, that it’s easy to miss the simple beauty that nature offers. That might be the case with a little known type of lightening that occurs between the part of the atmosphere where weather events are seen quite easily, and the far reaches near the beginning of space. Called sprites, these other kinds of lightening strikes are of far shorter duration than we’re accustomed to; it wasn’t until just the past thirty years or so that anyone even knew they existed. So odd were they, that pilots flying at high altitudes who saw them feared for their jobs if they spoke of them. Now however a research team has captured some instances of them using high speed cameras mounted on two jets to create 3D images.

In some respects, the images produced by the research team look like fireworks, creating jellyfish type patterns far above the thunderstorms below that are thought to spawn them. In others, they appear almost liquid in their fluidity. And even though they are way up there, some fifty miles from the ground, they can still be seen, as they are frequently brighter than Venus in the night sky, though doubtless most who have seen them, didn’t know they did, as they would have existed among regular storm cloud activity. Sort of like sprites and elves of lore.

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Video credit: NHK / AGU

Scientists still don’t know much about them, though theories regarding their origin abound. One that seems plausible is that when lightening with a positive charge occurs, surrounding clouds are drained of a positive charge, leaving them with a net negative charge, which could lead to an electrical field building up between the clouds and the upper atmosphere; when it reaches a certain point, sprites and elves appear. What’s also unclear is whether sprites and elves have any impact on weather, or if they just exist for moment, then disappear; ghostly bright apparitions one moment, gone the next without a trace.

In the language of those studying the phenomenon, sprites are the part of the lightening that resemble jellyfish and travel downwards after starting out as a ball shape. Elves are the halos that create the eerie effects. Both are reddish in color and last for something like 10 milliseconds.

The video was captured by a research team funded by the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation. Two jets flying over parts of the south-west United States this past summer, with cameras aboard, were used for filming to create the 3D effect and the results were presented at the American Geophysical Union Conference last week.

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Isaacsname
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)

Very neat video, I keep clicking on :05, you can almost see a deformation of (?) above the discharge, like a finger poking a plastic bag.

rawa1
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (4)

What that fu*ing stuff is all about? It looks like avalanche fall of accumulated pocket of charged particles toward the Earth. Something like the sudden breakup of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

Isaacsname
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)

If you pause between :06 and :07 , you can even see a small spheroid at the end of one of the discharges, ( over the " S " in the word SPRITE )

Eric_B
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 5 / 5 (5)

this is just light from venus diffracted through swampgas.

Sinister1811
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 2.3 / 5 (3)

this is just light from venus diffracted through swampgas.

lol And here I was thinking it was a weather balloon.

that_guy
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 5 / 5 (4)

What that fu*ing stuff is all about? It looks like avalanche fall of accumulated pocket of charged particles toward the Earth. Something like the sudden breakup of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

fu*ing Magnets. How do they work? - Insane Clown Posse.

But seriously - The last part of the video is awesome.

JohnYY
Dec 09, 2011

Rank: 5 / 5 (4)

The story would have been even better if it had spelled "lightning" correctly!! :(( That's inexcusable!

Expiorer
Dec 10, 2011

Rank: not rated yet

So where can we see that 3D video?

Callippo
Dec 10, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (2)

fu*ing Magnets. How do they work? - Insane Clown Posse

Nothing mad is on such question - this is how the internal structure of atoms has been revealed.

HannesAlfven
Dec 10, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (2)

A critical thinker who observes these phenomena would rightly wonder about the inferred cause for all lightning, given the observation that the Earth can be observed to be discharging with outer space. Conventional theories for lightning have failed to account for the observed energies of terrestrial lightning, and yet these accounting discrepancies could be easily resolved if the atmosphere was hypothesized to be a leg in a larger electrical circuit that connects Earth with space. We already see that the Earth exhibits an electric field, and it is commonly assumed that the Earth possesses an iron core. Why is it that we nevertheless avoid the hypothesis that the Earth can exhibit a charge density? If the Sun could do the same, then that would easily explain the solar wind fails to appreciably decelerate even as it passes the Earth's orbit.

The answer is that the gravity-based framework precludes the discussion. Thus, we ignore the possibility to support the framework.

HannesAlfven
Dec 10, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (2)

The notion that charge equalization between the Earth and space can do things of importance is also supported by the observation that some creatures -- like frogs -- can sense earthquakes before they occur. Gerald Pollack demonstrates quite conclusively in Gels, Cells and the Engines of Life that the body's water largely exists in a structured gel-like state. These alternating chains of water dipoles can transfer protons through a process called proton jumping, similar to what happens in semiconductors. Thus, if you have electrical currents moving through rock between the Earth's core and space, you could explain some earthquakes as the result of sufficient charge density to rupture rocky structures beneath the ground. This would also explain why strange lights sometimes appear in the sky preceding quakes -- because the induced atmospheric magnetic field can refract the light. And it furthermore explains why St Elmo's fire has occurred with some earthquakes in the past.

Callippo
Dec 10, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)

if you have electrical currents moving through rock between the Earth's core and space, you could explain some earthquakes as the result of sufficient charge density to rupture rocky structures beneath the ground

IMO you're confusing the cause with its consequences. It's the same reversal of causality arrow, like your recent claim, the Sun "is powered electrically" (the power of Sun is what makes the electrically charge plasma in it, not vice versa). I can accept, some earthquakes could deform the piezoelectric rocks, which creates the EM field, which would rouse few hamsters or even cause the redistribution of charge in the ionosphere, but the opposite mechanism seems too implausible for me. And it still explains why St Elmo's fire has occurred with some earthquakes in the past.

braindead
Dec 12, 2011

Rank: not rated yet

Perhaps they could catch some of this stuff and put it into "lightening" cream - cosmetic firms would love it. It would be very good on the other hand if journalists could just learn to use the language they use for their trade properly. Not difficult especially as the video title actually gets the spelling right.

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