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

The diversity doesn't have to cause division

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I can no more criticize cloud lightning than I can criticize lightning in general. I can no more criticize those who fear lightning than I can disown my grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of lightning which flashed in the night, and who on more than one occasion has uttered lightning stereotypes that made me cringe.

Lightning does not define me. It provides context, but it does not provide the content.

Teach the controversy

[UbuntuDupe]

This theory is all well and good, but shouldn't students also be exposed to alternate explanations, such as those involving the thunder god, Thor?

I Worked On This Project

[Stranger4U]

New array? I worked on this project in 99-00 and it was several years old then. I think "new" here just corresponds to awareness in the minds of the public. Papers derived from this research have been around ten years, at least. The results are, however, quite impressive. It's possible to plot, in time, the path a lightning bolt takes through a cloud. Airplanes are also quite easy to spot on their graphs. A quick look on their research page might make for interesting reading: Langmuir Labs.

Re:I got hit by lightning in 1998

[SpaceLifeForm]

Well, that explains all of your goofy posts here.