From the University of the Witwatersrand
New evidence on lightning strikes By Kanina Foss
Lightning strikes causing rocks to explode have for the first time been shown to play a huge role in shaping mountain landscapes in southern Africa, debunking previous assumptions that angular rock formations were necessarily caused by cold temperatures, and proving that mountains are a lot less stable than we think.
Image: fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au
In a world where mountains are crucial to food security and water supply, this has vast implications, especially in the context of climate change.
Professors Jasper Knight and Stefan Grab from the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University used a compass to prove – for the first time ever – that lightning is responsible for some of the angular rock formations in the Drakensburg.
“A compass needle always points to magnetic north. But when you pass a compass over a land’s surface, if the minerals in the rock have a strong enough magnetic field, the compass will read the magnetic field of the rock, which corresponds to when it was formed. In the Drakensburg, there are a lot of basalt rocks which contain a lot of magnetic minerals, so they’ve got a very strong magnetic signal,” says Knight.
If you pass a compass over an area where a lightning strike occurred, the needle will suddenly swing through 360 degrees.
“The energy of the lightning hitting the land’s surface can, for a short time, partially melt the rock and when the rock cools down again, it takes on the magnetic imprint of today’s magnetic field, not the magnetic field of millions of years ago when the rock was originally formed,” says Knight.
Because of the movement of continents, magnetic north for the newly formed rock will be different from that of the older rock around it. “You have two superimposed geomagnetic signatures. It’s a very useful indicator for identifying the precise location of where the lightning struck.”
Knight and Grab mapped out the distribution of lightning strikes in the Drakensburg and discovered that lightning significantly controls the evolution of the mountain landscapes because it helps to shape the summit areas – the highest areas – with this blasting effect.
Image: Professor Jasper Knight
Previously, angular debris was assumed to have been created by changes typical of cold, periglacial environments, such as fracturing due to frost. Water enters cracks in rocks and when it freezes, it expands, causing the rocks to split apart.
Knight and Grab are challenging centuries old assumptions about what causes mountains to change shape. “Many people have considered mountains to be pretty passive agents, just sitting there to be affected by cold climates over these long periods of time.
“This evidence suggests that that is completely wrong. African mountain landscapes sometimes evolve very quickly and very dramatically over short periods of time. These are actually very sensitive environments and we need to know more about them.”
It is also useful to try and quantify how much debris is moved by these blasts which can cause boulders weighing several tonnes to move tens of metres.
“We can identify where the angular, broken up material has come from, trace it back to source, and determine the direction and extent to which the debris has been blasted on either side. Of course we know from the South African Weather Service how many strikes hit the land’s surface, so we can estimate how much volume is moved per square kilometre per year on average,” says Knight.
The stability of the land’s surface has important implications for the people living in the valleys below the mountain. “If we have lots of debris being generated it’s going to flow down slope and this is associated with hazards such as landslides,” said Knight.
Mountains are also inextricably linked to food security and water supply. In Lesotho, a country crucial to South Africa’s water supply, food shortages are leading to overgrazing, exposing the rock surface and making mountain landscapes even more vulnerable to weathering by lightning and other processes.
Knight hopes that this new research will help to put in place monitoring and mitigation to try and counteract some of the effects. “The more we increase our understanding, the more we are able to do something about it.”
A research paper to be published in the scientific journal, Geomorphology, is available here.
You might want to try looking for lightning strikes after a lightning storm instead.
From http://www.gold-dna.de on October 15, 2013 at 4:06 pm:
I feel a South Park moment coming on. Oh wait, I’m too old and never saw that show. Must be a Beavis and Butthead flashback. Which I never saw either.
From link, with only one of the embedded links:
Very impressive, to those who know nothing about impact cratering and ejecta rays.
Also impressive for those who don’t know lightning travels along ionized pathways, sparks come from the breakdown of an insulating material that’s between the ends of the pathway. In the vacuum of space, there’s nothing to break down and ionize into a suitable pathway, thus you wouldn’t have “electric arcs” between celestial objects.
Yet like following a link promising naked beavers that yields a gallery of pics of shaved cats, I’m inclined to believe another link from the site will not only not yield the enticing evidence promised, what I will find is those running the site can’t even recognize what they do have.
Nothing new for the guys of the Electric Universe theory. The surface of planets and moons tells the story of lightning on a cosmic scale.
It’s new to Anthony though. He’s made a small step forward with this article. Now that there’s no shame in admitting lightning significantly crafts globe surfaces, perhaps he can go back and look at the pictures of Io. The recent pics show the ‘volcanos’ look nothing like volcanos and are it fact electrical discharges. Then onto considering the rest of the solar system…
From meemoe_uk on October 15, 2013 at 7:30 pm:
Mentioning a press release about a paper discussing lightning blasting mountain rocks is a small step towards accepting Electric Universe?
Actually given the sizes involved, it is impossible to determine if this is such a step forward or back per the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Although I am certain it is nothing on Anthony’s part as you want it to be.
Probably explains why there are no mountains in Iowa.
Go Home said on October 15, 2013 at 8:07 pm:
http://www.mountainzone.com/mountains/state.asp?s=IA
http://www.mountainzone.com/mountains/highest-peaks.asp?s=IA
Thirty years ago I installed a UHF solar powered business radio repeater on a mountain in Colorado. Worked great for about a month before the lightning god blew my handiwork to smithereens including the rather expensive solar panels.
Mountain radioman lesson one, good grounds are not available on a big pile of rocks. After putting everything except the solar panels and antenna in a well shielded and surge protected enclosure, the system worked for many years without issue.
Does this suggest that the systems was impervious to lightning ? Hardly. What it tells me is that even though the radio site was located on the highest available peak, and unprotected in any way from higher surrounding terrain, it was seldom if ever hit by any significant lightning for periods of many years. The suggestion that lightning is a significant factor in mountain erosion is suspect at best. The freeze thaw cycle however is very effective at turning big rocks into small rocks and at the higher elevations, at work almost every day of the year.
“Surely all geographers took the early retirement option in the 18th Century along with alchemists.”
Get a clue, snark.
Doug Hoffman, my first Muir Trail was in 1967. Skied most of it later. Heard one comment witnessing rocks explode at Glenn Pass. I believe. Ain’t seen it. Seen trees explode, but why not rocks?
Geology Jim, we are actually looking for an explanation why all the apparent polar wander paths go wanky about 500mya.
“…food shortages are leading to overgrazing, exposing the rock surface…”
I knew it, I knew it, it’s the cows that dunnit. It’s time to take action. Eat a cow, save a mountain!
Here’s a cool photo of lightning flattening a hillside (after cows had assisted by removing the grass first, of course.)
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/rolf-maeder-grand-canyon-lightning
Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark. Makes you wonder why they’re not the So-so Canyons after a few millennia of that abuse.
So, what if the lightning(thanks Jeff Alberts) follows a path of conductance in small water filled crack and heats the water to steam instantly? Different rock characteristics cause them to erode differently. Some rock may be easily eroded by lightning because water has penetrated it already. Or, perhaps some mineral layers conduct more than others and cause the energy of the strike to concentrate. I don’t think the magnetism observations make sense because the heat from lightning in sand only melts the grains of sand a short distance from the strike. But there is no question there would be plenty of heat to make steam. I observed a strike on a hill side in Modoc county California that caused a small fire in a tree while the ground around the tree was heated a full thirty feet from the base, and the area was dry, even though it had rained. As the photos of the Grand Canyon in the link above indicate, there is plenty of evidence for a lot of energy. So why couldn’t it break rock under some circumstances?
While I don’t think the Electric Universe hypothesis is true in the main, this is similar to one of the claims that they made: that electric plasma, essentially lightening, played a huge role in shaping rock formations.
OK, they believe this is interplanetary lightening. 😛
Enough sarcasm already this is really cool.
>Mentioning a press release about a paper discussing lightning blasting mountain rocks is a small step towards accepting Electric Universe?
Yes.
OK, they believe this is interplanetary lightening. 😛
No. The power comes from fusion around the sun and the milkyway AGN.
From meemoe_uk on October 16, 2013 at 8:12 am:
Wow. Accepting that lightning hits rocks is a step towards accepting Electric Universe. Heck, just accepting lightning exists at all must count as a small step as well.
Well, good thing that Anthony is a professional meteorologist. That means he’s getting paid for getting closer to believing in Electric Universe. Indeed, ANY meteorologist who accepts lightning can hit mountain rocks has made that small brave step towards believing Electric Universe.
AGN = Active Galactic Nucleus
Bold added:
http://www.universetoday.com/30719/active-galactic-nuclei/
and
I found what looks to be the paper mentioned, Evidence for Gamma-Ray Jets in the Milky Way by Meng Su and Douglas P. Finkbeiner, not paywalled.
Wow. Electric Universe says the energy (or did you really mean to say power?) comes from “fusion around the sun” and the Milky Way’s Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). Except the GN hasn’t been A for a very long time as far as we are concerned, although on galactic timescales it went dark “relatively” recently.
Leif Svalgaard has handily shown the energy output from the Sun’s fusion is accounted for. So where is all the energy that’s doing all this stuff the Electric Universe believers think is happening? Currently is there a draining of an Active Galactic Battery that’s hiding somewhere?
Someone discounted possible erosion by visiting geographers’ boots by asking one to consider the flatness of footpaths – or words to that effect.
I would rather ask you to consider the steps in mediaeval castles, cathedrals, etc, which are almost always dish shaped, down in the centre where people tread, and raised at the sides and back edge where people cannot tread. Wear could be easily one and a half inches per thousand years.
After reading all the comments , skeptical, mocking, funny and informative, I just have one thing to add from my corner no matter how or what or who is trying to explain the power of lightning, ? May it be from splitting rocks, trees, planets and or Galaxies…….
I tend to go indoors and enjoy the show from my dining room windows, see you all.
@accordion, I love that picture but I some doubts about it, looking at some of the shadowing on the left and slightly above ,( unless there was lightning of to the left NOT on the picture and I do take into account the other strikes both are behind the main bolt btw and do not show any typical brightness along the cloud line either) the shadows are not right to me, especially below the reddish band of the vertical rocks, as well there are three cliffs below the strike area to the left, right and directly below that face the same way but have different shades of black and there are more, just asking? Were these shots “layered” maybe? I am in no way a photographer but as an landscaper I do see things.
>Wow. Accepting that lightning hits rocks is a step towards accepting Electric Universe.
No not quite thats you bending the words a bit to make it sound daft.
Accepting lightning strikes, over thousands of years, in the mountains, crafts the surfaces of the mountains, i.e weathers mountains, substantially.
Is more correct.
from your quote ” Astronomers now think that there’s a supermassive black hole”
blackholes are a myth cooked up in the 20th century to explain cosmic X and gamma rays by gravitational dynamics. Since gravity is so extremely weak, an extremely dense object is needed. But relatively trivial power electrical discharges also emit X rays. Gamma rays are common in nuclear reactions. Astronomers never consider electrical discharges because they were brainwashed into ignoring the possibility of electricity in space.
Our own Milky Way has probably been host to an active galactic nucleus in the past, but it’s in a quiet phase right now.
Yes, but nuclear reactions still go on there powering the galactic circuit, but the ion discharges are more in dark mode than glow mode.
Leif Svalgaard has handily shown the energy output from the Sun’s fusion is accounted for.
He uses the core fusion model of the sun. That model doesn’t work. So the electric model has to be used. Fusion takes place in plasma that is sufficiently heated by electrical current. e.g. the the galactic centre, in the sun’s corona, and even a bit in the powerful lightning strikes on Earth. Lightning bolts can have instantaneous temperatures over a billion degrees. The common planet element Oxygen often gets fused into sulphur at such temperatures. Thats why Io , the highly electrical moon of Jupiter is covered in sulphur dust.