Crack! Lightning strikes are bright and loud—violent enough to shake your bones and light up the sky. Now, a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that these powerful events may also alter the chemistry ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 11, 2021
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35
A bolt of cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning forms if a lightning leader develops out of the cloud and reaches the ground. Positive CG (+CG) lightning is formed by a downward positive leader and transfers positive charge into ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 30, 2021
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6
One firebolt after another illuminates a stilt-house settlement where the Catatumbo river flows into Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo, the lightning capital of the world.
Environment
Sep 23, 2021
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9
A weather system approaching northwest California was expected to bring dry lightning and blustery winds by late Thursday, unleashing a risk of new wildfires as thousands of firefighters have been making headway against existing ...
Environment
Sep 09, 2021
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4
Faizuddin is still traumatised from the lightning strike that killed his three friends as they took selfies atop a 400-year-old fort in India, where climate change is making lethal strikes more common.
Environment
Sep 03, 2021
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22
Almost 270 years since Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, lightning protection is still based on this same concept. Although we can't deny the benefits of lightning rods, major drawbacks do remain. Installing permanent ...
Optics & Photonics
Aug 25, 2021
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100
Several lightning bolts hit a Bangladesh wedding party within a few seconds Wednesday, killing 16 people and injuring the groom, officials said.
Environment
Aug 04, 2021
0
14
While every lightning flash is unique in the way the discharge travels through the atmosphere, whether cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground or the more esoteric sprites, halos, jets, and elves of the upper atmosphere. There are ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 10, 2021
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3
A giant sinkhole that was expanding by dozens of meters each day has alarmed residents in a rural area of central Mexico where it was threatening to swallow a house.
Environment
Jun 02, 2021
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11
We are all familiar with the bolts of lightning that accompany heavy storms. While these flashes originate in storm clouds and strike downwards, a much more elusive type forms higher up in the atmosphere and shoots up towards ...
Earth Sciences
May 19, 2021
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35
Lightning is an atmospheric discharge of electricity accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms. In the atmospheric electrical discharge, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 60,000 m/s (130,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass channels known as fulgurites which are normally hollow and can extend some distance into the ground. There are some 16 million lightning storms in the world every year.
Lightning can also occur within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions, or can be caused by violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.
How lightning initially forms is still a matter of debate: Scientists have studied root causes ranging from atmospheric perturbations (wind, humidity, friction, and atmospheric pressure) to the impact of solar wind and accumulation of charged solar particles. Ice inside a cloud is thought to be a key element in lightning development, and may cause a forcible separation of positive and negative charges within the cloud, thus assisting in the formation of lightning.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
