Researchers Unravel Mystery of Lightning Diversity

coondoggie writes to tell us that researchers from Penn State and New Mexico Tech have unraveled the mystery of lightning diversity. A new "Lightning Mapping Array" has been able to show detailed models on how lightning acts. "About 90% of lightning occurs inside clouds and is not visible to the casual observer, researchers said. The researchers wondered if lightning that appears within clouds and the lightning that escapes upward or downward shared the same development mechanisms, researchers said. Lightning forms in clouds when different areas of the cloud become either positively or negatively charged. Once the electric field near a charged area exceeds a certain propagation level, lightning occurs. The type of lightning depends on where the charge builds and where the imbalance in charge exists in the clouds. The mechanism behind different types of lightning is what the new model shows, researchers said."

Comments

Ball Lightening

[eldavojohn]

I'm shocked there's no mention here of ball lightening and I wonder if they can time the discharge of 60 MHz RF radiation from each lightening strike. If they can, I would be interested in seeing the outliers that last longer than a fraction of a second. Ball lightening is often reported to last several seconds and I think this would be easy to spot if they wanted to try to verify that it actually occurs in nature.

I got hit by lightning in 1998

[Anonymous Coward]

It hurt.

Power Source?

[JohnSearle]

I'm curious as to when they're going to be able to harness this energy as an alternative power source. It would be very cool to see blimps as power stations siphoning off energy from the clouds. I assume this isn't feasible (yet at least), considering I haven't heard anything about it...

Can any explain the major defects this type of energy gathering?

- John