Super-slow-motion footage from recent Florida storm
From the FLORIDA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MELBOURNE, FLA. — Scientists at Florida Institute of Technology used a high-speed camera to capture an amazing lighting flash from a May 20 storm near the university’s Melbourne campus.
The flash was recorded at 7,000 frames per second (FPS). The playback speed seen in the video is 700 FPS.
The video was captured as part of the process of testing the camera for its ultimate use, which will be centered on capturing and studying the dynamics and energetics of the upward electrical discharges from thunderstorms known as starters, jets and gigantic jets.
Principal Investigator Ningyu Liu from the Geospace Physics Laboratory in Florida Tech’s Department of Physics and Space Sciences is available for interviews.
The lightning flash captured here happened during a May 20 storm not far from the Florida Tech campus in Melbourne. It was recorded at 7,000 frames per second using a high-speed camera.
Video courtesy of the Geospace Physics Laboratory, Department of Physics and Space Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology.
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Looks like my question got hijacked, lets try that one again
While we are on the topic of electrical discharges, any one know of a good popular science book that talks about thunderstorms and atmospheric electrical discharges? Its a fascinating topic from the point of view of history, destructiveness, power, variety, recent discoveries, and apparently lack of clear understanding of what causes them.
Not read any, open this link for lots of books, someone else might know of a good book.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=atmospheric+electricity+books&tbm=shop
Books on space plasma, plasma cosmology, which also deals with electricity and electromagnetism
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#tbm=shop&q=plasma+cosmology+books
cant be of more specific help.
There are some other works, but they are shunned by dogma, Electric Universe has many interesting observations even though I am not on board with the theory as a whole, some of what they show should not be ignored, they are as entrenched as the other side of the debate, I dislike entrenched beliefs
Unfortunately the EU people have aligned with some pretty strange theories, though I always find it interesting going through these theories nonetheless even if I am not on board with the conclusions
Am willing to look at anything for the hell of it. If only science the institution worked that way eh
Here is a current paper that you might enjoy.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JD020225/full
Dont wind turbines create a positive charge of lower potential that a lightning strike can hit when it offers up a lead? The blades are part of that circuit and the nearest part to a negative charge.
Don’t think it’s related to rotation at all, think that is just consequential
http://www.mdpi.com/energies/energies-07-02595/article_deploy/html/images/energies-07-02595f8-1024.png
I could be wrong of course
*inconsequential
Fascinating video! And all the other videos in the thread.
I have 1 question though: What does lightening ultimately do to a thunderstorm? I have a basic understanding of it’s properties–the hows and whys per electrical “balance” (for lack of a better word), but has anyone studied what happens after lightening has occurred and what it’s real purpose actually is? I’m always brought to the question of why–after learning the how–so why is it necessary, what does it do to the immediate environment …i.e. inside a thunderstorm? Anyone know?
Lightning is caused by a charge potential, it’s an effect caused positive and negative charges in clouds, but there is input from outside our weather system
Convection causes the thunderstorm and the thunderstorm clouds create lightning.
Lightning will follow a potential difference, potential on the ground draws the lightning, a strike is not driven from above I think
here is what appears to be a reverse in potential to the usual
Here the potential difference is above the clouds
http://futurismic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/upward-lightning.jpg
Potential difference within the cloud
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/02/10/31C35AF400000578-3472686-image-a-2_1456914384729.jpg
Bolts discharge sideways, down and up and anywhere there is a difference in potential. Sideways discharges in clouds are probably where Chinese dragon myths comes from.
http://www.orientaloutpost.com/big/n7963.jpg
Given NASA have confirmed a circuit between the earth and sun when we see the northern lights, a circuit can be a path to juice up the atmosphere? I dunno, there must be a flux input, CMEs cause geomagnetic storms and these can dump serious charges into out electrical grids, so we have charge input from the sun.
On further reflection, you may have something there, two separate negative electron charges will repel each other, but what effect this would have on the thunderstorm I have no idea.
I do suspect intrinsic electrical spin has something to do with Tornadoes in some way, but I don’t have the skills to work the problem
Ben Franklin must have been a nut case.
http://www.skytamer.com/4.1/1700/Ben_Franklin_kite.jpg
Nutcases do real experiments, others use maths only, I vote for the nutcase camp
By nutcase I mean someone with the balls to do these experiments
Well when I was in school studying Radio Physics, we had students researching electric fields under thunderstorms, so they built instruments to measure the electric fields under a thunderstorm. These battery powered and vacuum tube smarts sensors needed to be attached to a standard Radiosonde balloon which then was flown on a tether, up into the face of the thunderstorm.
So all of this stuff was kept in readiness in the RP department, until we got a weather report of a coming (very soon) thunderstorm.
So we would pack all this stuff down to the harbor, and a remote pier, and set up the balloons, and sensors, on a string, and then inflate the balloon with HYDROGEN !!
And then send it up into the clouds (almost) to radio back the electric fields measured by the Student designed instruments.
So there we all were soaking wet idiots, standing out in the open, on a pier over the harbor, and hanging on to a string going up to a metal gizmo under a hydrogen filled balloon, and basically saying to Donner; ” Stick it in your ear pal !! ”
Professor’s name was Dr. Karl Kreielscheimer; and he was an expert on antenna design. One of my favorite Professors. RP was one of my Physics majors. It also included electronics , ionospheric theory antennas; the whole radio shebang. Circa 1957; right around Sputnik Launch time.
G
Must have been awesome George, the way things went for myself I only got into it in my late 30s, regret it I do
All I can envision is another 3 or 4 paintings, with Franklin first handing the string to the kid and then scooting a safe distance away to watch.
ROFL!
Ah! So that’s why Ben left no offspring. They were all toasted.
A theme song for this thread:
Freeze Frame by J. Geils Band
I’ll see your “Amazing Lightning Flash,” and raise you a “Swarm of Sprites.”
And the sprite will drop the Ionosphere down from 90km to40km, how about that.. wowee
“” Lightning scientist Oscar van der Velde of the Technical University of Catalonia explains: “A cluster of sprites can actually warp Earth’s ionosphere, bringing it down from its usual altitude of 90 km to only 40 km.””
http://www.spaceweather.com/
http://www.heliotown.com/spMay232016_041830JET_Ashcraftforever.gif