Ordinary Lightning Research Articles

Positively Charged Water as a Plant Germination Stimulator

There is a powerful electromagnetic force on Earth that moves positive charges up and negative charges down. This force participates in many phenomena occurring both in the Earth's atmosphere and on its surface, both in the grandiose and in the almost imperceptible. So, this force causes atmospheric discharges, both ascending currents of positive charges, namely, heavenly spirits and elves, and descending currents of negative charges, namely ordinary lightning. In addition, this force distributes the water within the clouds, directing the positively charged vapor upward and the negatively charged downward. Also, this force determines the ability of salts dissolved in positively charged water to form ascending plant-like crystals. All this made it possible to assume the participation of the same force in the distribution of water inside plants. In particular, it was assumed that under the action of this force, positively charged water moves upward inside the plants, and negatively charged water moves downward. Accordingly, it was assumed that positively charged water stimulates plant growth better than negatively charged water. Both of these assumptions have been verified experimentally. As expected, positively charged water stimulated the germination of various plants, while negatively charged water suppressed it. All this made it possible to propose a fundamentally new mechanism for the distribution of water inside vertical plants. In addition, other mechanisms were analyzed to explain the opposite effects of positively and negatively charged water on germinating plants.

Comment on “Chelyabinsk, Zond IV, and a possible first‐century fireball of historical importance”

Comment on “Chelyabinsk, Zond <scp>IV</scp>, and a possible first‐century fireball of historical importance”

Anecdote of the Jar, or A Gift from My Dead Californian Housemate, and: Hiking to Le Cimetière Marin

Anecdote of the Jar, or A Gift from My Dead Californian Housemate, and: Hiking to Le Cimetière Marin Kristin Robertson (bio) Anecdote of the Jar, or A Gift from My Dead Californian Housemate I capitulated his ghosts were humming in the attic after he’d conceded there was no attic. I cradled his teacup Rottweiler named Magic and sang her the blackbird songs: All your life, all your life. Take these broken wings. And the other one, Pack up all my care and woe. Once he’d surrendered his broom handle, early morning knocks on the spirits’ floorboards, I thumbed his crosses and crystals with tenderness, acknowledged the voices when they instructed him to leap naked off the pier. I even led the rescue copters astray in the dead of night. (Bye, bye, blackbird—) All of this after he agreed to bequeath me his jar. Windowsilled with its sisters full of rainwater and moth-eaten endearments, the jar he said sat brim with lush left-alones and ordinary lightning. Everyone warned me about California and its crazies, so I’m driving this jar back to Tennessee, [End Page 55] where grandmothers ban housecats from nurseries and during sun-showers the devil beats his wife. Like nothing else, this jar, a legacy of my housemate once he was forever out of hand, the moon in. Hiking to Le Cimetière Marin Sick as a dog in Sète, I don’t tell Sonja who’s hell-bent on seeing Valéry’s grave. I snap in half these fishing-town gimcracks, souvenir shell rings and whistlers, objets d’art for our winding footpath, anything to distract myself from pain sharp as sea change. Ahead she traces scars on headstones, dried funeral rosebuds like pill cups flush with salt-spray. At these cliffs, where scores of stone Marys overlook the Mediterranean, surrender feels right— give up your dove, your angel, whatever lightness helped you get here. Watch your white wings turn to sails. [End Page 56] Kristin Robertson Kristin Robertson’s first book is Surgical Wing (Alice James Books, 2017). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Harvard Review, TriQuarterly, and Pleiades, among other journals. Copyright © 2017 University of Nebraska Press

High-altitude electrical discharges associated with thunderstorms and lightning

The purpose of this paper is to introduce electrical discharge phenomena known as transient luminous events above thunderstorms to the lightning protection community. Transient luminous events include the upward electrical discharges from thunderstorms known as starters, jets, and gigantic jets, and electrical discharges initiated in the lower ionosphere such as sprites, halos, and elves. We give an overview of these phenomena with a focus on starters, jets, gigantic jets, and sprites, because similar to ordinary lightning, streamers and leaders are basic components of these four types of transient luminous events. We present a few recent observations to illustrate their main properties and briefly review the theories. The research in transient luminous events has not only advanced our understanding of the effects of thunderstorms and lightning in the middle and upper atmosphere, but also improved our knowledge of basic electrical discharge processes critical for sparks and lightning.

Revisiting &amp;quot;Narrow Bipolar Event&amp;quot; intracloud lightning using the FORTE satellite

Abstract. The lightning stroke called a "Narrow Bipolar Event", or NBE, is an intracloud discharge responsible for significant charge redistribution. The NBE occurs within 10–20 μs, and some associated process emits irregular bursts of intense radio noise, fading at shorter timescales, sporadically during the charge transfer. In previous reports, the NBE has been inferred to be quite different from other forms of lightning strokes, in two ways: First, the NBE has been inferred to be relatively dark (non-luminous) compared to other lightning strokes. Second, the NBE has been inferred to be isolated within the storm, usually not participating in flashes, but when it is in a flash, the NBE has been inferred to be the flash initiator. These two inferences have sufficiently stark implications for NBE physics that they should be subjected to further independent test, with improved statistics. We attempt such a test with both optical and radio data from the FORTE satellite, and with lightning-stroke data from the Los Alamos Sferic Array. We show rigorously that by the metric of triggering the PDD optical photometer aboard the FORTE satellite, NBE discharges are indeed less luminous than ordinary lightning. Referred to an effective isotropic emitter at the cloud top, NBE light output is inferred to be less than ~3 × 108 W. To address isolation of NBEs, we first expand the pool of geolocated intracloud radio recordings, by borrowing geolocations from either the same flash's or the same storm's other recordings. In this manner we generate a pool of ~2 × 105 unique and independent FORTE intracloud radio recordings, whose slant range from the satellite can be inferred. We then use this slant range to calculate the Effective Radiated Power (ERP) at the radio source, in the passband 26–49 MHz. Stratifying the radio recordings by ERP into eight bins, from a lowest bin (&lt;5 kW) to a highest bin (&gt;140 kW), we document a trend for the radio recordings to become more isolated in time as the ERP increases. The highest ERP bin corresponds to the intracloud emissions associated with NBEs. At the highest ERP, the only significant probability of temporal neighbors is during times following the high-ERP events. In other words, when participating in a flash, the high-ERP emissions occur at the apparent flash initiation.

Comparison of Narrow Bipolar Events with Ordinary Lightning as Proxies for the Microwave-Radiometry Ice-Scattering Signature

Abstract The narrow bipolar event (NBE) is a unique lightning discharge that has a short (∼10 μs) overall duration, lacks a prior leader phase, and produces too little light output to be visible by optical lightning detectors on satellites. NBEs thus have basic differences from ordinary lightning discharges, which occur in flashes lasting up to a fraction of a second, carry significant current in a “stroke” only after a leader stage that prepares the conductive channel, and produce copious light that is recordable from space. Thus, the authors are motivated to determine whether the meteorological setting of NBEs differs from, or is similar to, that of ordinary lightning. A previous paper started this project of comparing NBEs with ordinary lightning by comparing the placement of either type of lightning within spatial structures of cloud depth, as revealed by infrared cloud-top temperature. That previous study employed lightning data from the Los Alamos Sferic Array (LASA) in Florida. The present paper extends this approach to comparing LASA NBEs with ordinary lightning events’ spatial relationships to radiometric cloud imagery from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) 85-GHz channels. This form of radiometric imagery reveals the location of deep, active convective cores with more acute spatial selectivity than does the infrared cloud-top temperature. It was found that the behaviors of NBEs and ordinary lighting are, once again, indistinguishable, but with regard this time to proximity to deep convective cores as revealed by TMI.

Comparison of Narrow Bipolar Events with Ordinary Lightning as Proxies for Severe Convection

Abstract Narrow bipolar events (NBEs) are a recently studied intracloud electrical-discharge process. It is speculated that an NBE is instigated by the extensive atmospheric shower of an energetic cosmic ray. NBEs cause significant relaxation of the charge separation within the electrified cloud in a short time, on the order of 10 μs. The current flow causes radiation of a distinctive “bipolar” low-frequency/very low frequency signal that can be recorded at locations on earth up to thousands of kilometers from the source. NBEs are preceded/accompanied by the most powerful very high frequency radio emissions seen in any kind of lightning. These intense pulsed radio emissions have been routinely detected with satellite-borne radio receivers in space. Owing to their easy detection and recognition, NBEs might be a useful remote sensing proxy for space-based global, near–real time remote sensing. However, in order for that potential to be realized, NBEs must be shown to be associated, as is ordinary lightning, with severe tropospheric convection, rather than to be just a curiosity of cosmic-ray–atmosphere interactions. This question is addressed with a detailed comparison of NBEs and ordinary lightning using a ground-based lightning-transient research facility that records signals from both ordinary lightning and NBEs, the Los Alamos Sferic-waveform Array (LASA), based in Florida. First, the data from LASA are internally compared to examine the relationship of NBEs and ordinary lightning in both position and time. Second, the relationship of both NBEs and ordinary lightning to simultaneous infrared cloud imagery is examined [from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-East (GOES-East)] in order to infer the relative affinities of NBEs and ordinary lightning for cloud signatures that are consistent with severe convection.

New model and estimation of the danger of ball lightning

A new model of ball lightning is proposed. The main model assumption is that ball lightning has a core consisting of clouds of electrons and totally ionized ions which oscillate with respect to each other. According to the model, ball lightning emits high energy photons that are sometimes dangerous for human beings, and in a number of situations it can kill humans by electric pulses; the ball lightning energy can be of the order of 106 J and even greater. The electric charges that need to be injected into the atmosphere to create ball lightning and the currents, providing the injection of such charges, are estimated. These estimates predict that ball lightning can be created in the experiments with ordinary lightning or powerful electrical installations.

Physical mechanisms for the development of lightning discharges between a thundercloud and the ionosphere

An investigation is made of the influence of changes in atmospheric pressure with altitude and the thundercloud geometry on the development of lightning propagating upward to the ionosphere. It is shown that the mechanism for the development of high-altitude lightning does not differ from that for the formation and propagation of ordinary lightning between a thundercloud and the ground. It is established that high-altitude lightning forms as a result of a reduction in pressure with altitude and can only take place from thunderclouds located at high altitudes.

Detecting Tornadoes by Radio

The tornado season is now at its peak, and Plains and Midwestern States are being swept by dozens of the destructive funnels. Each year, more than 600 tornadoes materialize th United States, taking more lives than February's San Fernando earthquake. Last year, a total of 650 tornadoes caused 73 deaths. This toll is comparatively mild: On March 18, 1925, one of the great killers of all time ripped a 200-mile path through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing 700 people. Several years ago, a number of observers-both amateur and professional -reported that by tuning their television sets to a channel for which there was no local station and turning the screen dark, they had picked up distinctive signals from tornadoes the vicinity. The most obvious interpretation of this ability of television sets to tune in a tornado, point out three scientists at Iowa State University, is that the storms emitted radio noise pulses the very-high-frequency (VHF) range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Dr. John L. Stanford, Michael A. Lind and Gene S. Takle therefore embarked upon a study, supported by the university's physics department, of the electromagnetic pulses generated by severe storms. It has been known for years that thunderstorms create electromagnetic noise; this is the cause of radio static during a storm. But the Iowa State scientists hoped to find identifiable differences between the signals emitted by different types of severe weather. The chief goals of the study are to find out if some fraction of tornadoes (or other severe weather such as hailstorms and windstorms) does indeed produce electromagnetic radiation different from that of thunderstorms, and if so, how this tornado radiation may be distinguished. The Iowa scientists also want to discover what fraction of tornadoes do not emit characteristic radiation, and, conversely, what fraction of tornado-like signals would be false indicators of a tornado. Finally, the three hope to uncover the physics of the phenomenon. Thunderstorms producing tornadoes often display unusually intense lightning, and a number of authors have discussed the electrical phenomena associated with tornadoes. There are many reports on electromagnetic noise generation at very low frequencies, and it has been shown that storm noise energy this region of the spectrum is due primarily to large-scale electrical strokes and is not as good an indicator of tornadic activity as higher frequencies. The researchers therefore set up an antenna system to monitor higher electromagnetic frequencies-670 kilohertz, 53 megahertz and 144 megahertz. The researchers recorded the electromagnetic signals received by the antenna on magnetic tape and then counted the pulse rates and charted them against time to give pulse rate per second. The results of their first year of observations, from six storms of the 1970 tornado season, were summarized recently the JOURNAL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES. The data reveal several possibly different types of electromagnetic radiation phenomena from storms: Radiation from ordinary lightning strokes creates isolated, high-amplitude peaks pulse rate. Another type is a gradual build-up pulse rate over a 15to 30-minute period. This is probably connected with convective processes occurring while the storm is building. In a third type, pulse-rate peaks occur almost periodically at intervals of about 10 minutes. These patterns appeared to be associated time with observed severe weather events and

Energy source for ball lightning

It is shown that the EM radiation frequencies from external sources required to form ball lightning (according to the Kapitza theory) are emitted during the collision of charged water drops. Calculations show that a reasonable volume of nominally charged droplets will provide the energy necessary for the lightning ball, but a prohibitively large volume of ordinary rain drops is required. It is hypothesized that shock from ordinary bolt lightning may provide the requisite droplet-charging energy, either through liquid breakup in a polarizing field or by gas friction. Interactions or convergence of the EM radiation may be of importance in producing the required localized energy densities.

Whistlers excited by nuclear explosions

The dynamic spectra of whistlers excited by five nuclear explosions are found to be identical to those of natural whistlers observed within a few minutes of shot time. Two shots fired at the Nevada proving ground produce normal two- hop whistlers at Stanford, 600 km to the west. Three shots fired over Johnston Island (about 14 deg N geomagnetic latitude) produce one-hop whistlers, some of which are received at northern hemisphere stations as far away as Stanford, 5100 km to the northeast. No whistlers are observed on Kauai, only 1200 km northeast of Johnston Island. Analysis shows that the magnetospheric paths of natural and explosion-excited whistlers are essentially the same, and that these paths are fixed in the ionosphere and are not necessarily close to the impulse source or the receiver. From analysis of impulse-whistler delays of shot Teak, it is deduced that the one-hop whistler received at Stanford is excited by an impulse that first crosses the equator in the earth-ionosphere wave guide before entering the whistler duct in the southern hemisphere, as suggested in the concept of the hybrid whistler. The high-altitude shot Starfish Prime (July 9, 1962) is detonated at 400-km altitude, but the dispersion of themore » source impulse is similar to that of ordinary lightning impulses. This result is interpreted to mean that the impulse is produced below the ionosphere, thus providing support for the Compton-electron mechanism of impulse generation. The similarity between the natural and shot-excited whistlers leads to the conclusion that shotexcited whistlers cannot be used for the purpose of detecting nuclear explosions. (auth)« less

The relation between lightning discharges and atmospherics in radio receiving

In order to examine the relations between lightning discharges and atmospherics cathode ray oscillographs were applied to record the variation forms of atmospherics. By simultaneous observations of atmospherics, by the aid of the loud speakers of radio receiving sets and corresponding records by cathode ray oscillographs the existence of two characteristic variation forms of atmospherics in connection with thunderstorms were obtained, ( a) “the clicks”-singular discharges of a comparatively short duration (up to some hundred microseconds) and caused by shorter local sparks, ( b) “the grinders” whistling or hissing perturbation forms in the loud speakers. The corresponding oscillograms resulted in complicated variation forms of the same type as the Author had observed to be usual in ordinary lightning discharges. The relation to lightning was further investigated in an indirect manner. By cathode ray oscillographic records atmospherics of ordinary types with their centres of origin at greater distances from the locality of observations were examined. These atmospherics showed in most cases very characteristic variation forms with more or less pronounced and superimposed periodic or quasiperiodic variation. The main problem was how to explain the generation of these variation forms from known discharges as they were observed at the most probable centres of emission—e.g. lightning paths. For that purpose the transmission equation for radio waves was applied on such discharge variation forms which had been observed to be usual in partial lightning discharges. From the calculation it was concluded that atmospherics with typical variations could be derived from lightning discharges with known and uncomplicated variation forms fixed by cathode ray oscillographic recording. The sometimes apparently complicated variation forms of atmospherics of the short variation type were thus in the most cases found to be a secondary effect caused by gradual deformation during transmission.

Ball Lightning

PROF. J. C. JENSEN, of Nebraska Wesleyan University, Washington, describes in Physics, vol. 4, October, 1933, how he was fortunate enough to photo-graphball lightning when he was taking photographs of ordinary lightning in an August thunderstorm. The display of lightning was taking place in the region of the outrushing cold squall in advance of the main mass of the storm, and this squall was carrying with it great quantities of dust. In the wake of one of the flashes came the globular lightning, apparently floating slowly downwards. Two or three brilliant globular structures of the kind known as ball lightning appeared to travel along a pair of high-voltage power lines for a considerable distance, eventually falling to the ground and disappearing with a loud report. Two are clearly visible on one of the photographs, and, as their distance was known, it was an easy matter to determine their diameters, which were found to be very much larger than numerous observations of the phenomenon made elsewhere would have led one to expect, namely, 28 ft and 42 ft. Unfortunately, ball lightning is so rare compared with ordinary lightning that the much desired “confirmatory evidence of the occurrence of such large globular structures that might result from further photographs may be a long time in coming. There seerns no doubt from the repeated observations of ball lightning made inside houses, and from the size of holes made by it through window-panes, that it is generally much smaller.

Prevention of Transient Voltage in Windings

This paper relates to windings such as are used in transformers, reactors and the like, with particular reference to the characteristics which determine internal distributions of suddenly impressed voltages or sudden voltage changes, and the resulting internal oscillations. Ordinary lightning arresters, which limit the maximum voltages reaching the winding terminals, but cause rather than prevent the occurrence of sudden voltage changes, certainly give no protection against excessive voltages between turns or between coils. After describing the production of these transient voltages in ordinary windings, and pointing out that the treatment of symptoms by the addition of extra insulation tends to defeat itself by augmenting the cause, this paper explains these phenomena as due to faulty arrangements of inherent capacitance with the inductance of the winding. A fundamental principle is evolved indicating the constitutional remedy, which, if perfectly applied, would give only uniform internal voltage distributions, however abrupt or frequent the voltage changes at the terminals might be. Methods of application are described for the ordinary windings, by supplementing the faulty arrangements of inherent capacitance with auxiliary capacitances or condensers. Methods are given, also, for the construction of windings with the ideal distribution of inherent capacitance called for by the principle. Two alternative statements of the fundatmental principle upon which the ideal distribution of capacitance is based are emphasized in the paper, and the application of the principle is adequately illustrated in the figures, of which Fig.

Lightning—Chain Formation

ON September 9, 1895, I was cycling near Pitlochry, N.B. The day had been extremely hot—80° F. in the shade—and as dusk came on it grew somewhat foggy, and flashes of distant lightning became frequent. At ten o'clock there suddenly came on a terrific thunder-storm. Crash succeeded crash, and the lightning, of all colours, blazed almost continuously. Objects fifteen miles off could be seen as plainly, if not more so, than in bright daylight. The rain soon turned the road into a torrent, and my electric lamp failed to act properly. But the chief peculiarity was the occurrence of eight strange flashes of a chain formation, with large elliptical links, and of a golden-yellow colour. These flashes were not rapid in their passage, as ordinary lightning is wont to be; but one of them took slightly over a minute to pour from the clouds to the edge of the valley opposite me. Two of these chains of living, burning gold passed between adjacent clouds, while the remaining six came to earth, one in the field just beside me. I then went off to seek for shelter; but the storm continued till 1 a.m.