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"Gigantic Jets" Blast Electricity Into the Ionosphere
New Scientist has an update on the so-called "gigantic jets" first discovered in 2003 — these are lightning bolts that reach from cloud tops upward into the ionosphere, as high as 90 kilometers. (There's a video at the link.) What's new is that researchers from Duke University have managed to measure the electrical discharge from a gigantic jet and confirm that they carry as much energy skyward as ordinary lightning strikes carry to the ground. According to the article, "Gigantic jets are one of a host of new atmospheric phenomena discovered in recent years. Other examples are sprites and blue jets."
Not only does their production get delayed all the time but it turns out they have environmental impact!
Don't stand high above Cumulonimbus clouds. Important safety information. Thank you.
only if it accidentally the whole thing.
That was the most underwhelming video of a 90 km lightning bolt I could have possibly imagined.
Long live the BSD license
Just like so many other scientific discoveries like say, the germ-theory of medicine. In many cases, getting the science right is less difficult than getting the science community and the general public to accept your discovery.
Einstein was right: "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
The first indications that I saw of cloud to ionosphere discharges was in QST in the 1980's - someone had shown a very good correlation between major T-storm activity and sporadic E skip above 50MHz. When I saw the first reports of sprites in the mid-1990's, my first thought was "this explains sporadic E-skip".
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Eyewitnesses are often wrong about what they see. There are lots of studies on it. Asking for actual evidence rather than anecdotal reports isn't really that much to ask before accepting something as true.
Science doesn't just accept something new as being true just because someone says it's so. That's a good thing.
"The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms.
You sure have drunk the Electric Universe kool-aid.
"Mainstream science" recognizes the flow of charged particles from the Sun as an electric current. It's the rest of the Electric Nonsense like the Sun being powered by electricity instead of fusion that it rejects.
But sure, tell us all about how physicists are so stupid they don't know what a current is. If they won't admit that the Sun is powered by electricity then they certainly can't admit that charged particles exist in the solar wind. Oh wait. They do, and this has been established by "mainstream scientists" long before EU "theory" was invented. I hate to break it to you, but they occupy their time by sitting around thinking up new ways to deny the Truth of EU Theory.
And while you're at it, follow it up with an extended rant about how all these idiot scientists are putting down all the brave genius Galileos. That never gets old. It's always good for a Slashdot up-mod, though.
If you want your atmospheric phenomena to be taken seriously, don't give them names that belong in an Austin Powers movie.
I piss off bigots.
We've discovered, documented, and explained a major new form of lightning that, previous poster notwithstanding, hadn't even really been rumored until recently. So where are the videos and large-scale studies and quantitative models for ball lightning, which has been "generally accepted as real" for well over a hundred years?
Seriously, come on. We've got millions of hours of footage of lightning, tornadoes, meteors, and even rarer and more transient phenomena. But, as far as I know, there isn't one single unambiguous high-quality video of ball lightning "in the wild". So why are we still giving it the benefit of the doubt? How many years will it have to evade our ubiquitous cameras before we just stop believing in it?
Use html for formatting./> gives you a line break.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
He may have been overly harsh, but the Electric Universe idea has been disproven for many years. It's fair to say that it isn't science, but rather a conspiracy theory promoted by people who don't understand physics (or science) very well.
In addition to my critique, Tim Thompson has rebutted the electric sun idea in depth, and W.T. Bridgman has a lengthy critique of the same notion on his site "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy." Unfortunately, my internet connection is screwed up so I can't provide direct links to these articles at the moment.
As I mention here, the solar wind is electrically neutral. The Sun isn't "electric." It's a giant ball of fusing hydrogen and helium, and the solar wind is primarily thermally-driven (with exceptions due to solar flares, etc.)
You're not flamebait, just confused or seriously lacking in graduate physics education. The Electric Universe idea has been disproven for many years. It's fair to say that it isn't science, but rather a conspiracy theory promoted by people who don't understand physics (or science) very well.
In addition to my critique, Tim Thompson has rebutted the electric sun idea in depth, and W.T. Bridgman examines the idea in detail on his site "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy." Unfortunately, my internet connection is screwed up so I can't provide direct links to these articles at the moment.
pilots in the 60 who spoke quietly about these. Of course, scientists said that no such thing exists and as such, most pilots kept real quiet about it. Only at wild 60's parties would I hear some of these guys talking about it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1 Coulomb is a charge, not a current. Not a terribly big charge either. A "gold cap" 1F capacitor charged to 1V holds 1C. Discharging 1C at an extreme voltage in a very short time, now that's impressive.
After rebooting the router, I can give you W.T. Bridgman's review of "The Electric Sky" and Tim Thompson's review of the electric sun idea, and a follow-up.
After rebooting the router, I can give you W.T. Bridgman's review of "The Electric Sky" and Tim Thompson's review of the electric sun idea, and a follow-up.
Okay, that was an interesting description. You might note that any US auroral research is best performed in Alaska more for reasons of auroral proximity than prying eyes -- and there are a number of US citizens in Alaska, anyway.
But, while I find myself unable to share your paranoia (the ability for humans to perceive false correlation with such things is legendary -- ask the 1000s of hams whose neighbors suddenly "start" suffering TV interference when they see a new tower put up), that is a very interesting facility -- 3.6MW of RF is nothing to sneeze at, and pumping the ionosphere with HF to transmit ELF is damn cool. Thanks for the info, and here's a link for others who may be interested.
73 de ab9ul
My father flew F-102's, the first supersonic aircraft commissioned for battle by the US Air Force. If you get the "official" Air Force post card of the F-102, my dad's flying it. He flew Delta jets later until he retired a few years ago. He told me about red-coloured lightning going up from clouds into the sky when I was a kid (1970's), and the other pilots also knew about them, too. Are these the same as the "sprites" mentioned here?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
There is a big difference between "we need better evidence" or "we need more evidence" or even "we have no evidence for it" and "it's impossible because we don't know how it would work, so we don't believe it".
The best I can figure is that if a ball lightning object is caught on film, people end up calling them UFO scare attempts, then saying "There is no such thing as a UFO, so it must be a hoax".
Consider though: All of the above-mentioned items are visible unambiguously from miles away. They are all large-scale items. Ball lightning is considered to be small and doesn't act like meteors (falling fireball that you can photograph dozens of on the right night). I would expect that in close proximity, ball lightning would be too bright for the camera (or human eyes) to deal with properly, just ending up washing out the light detection device. At a distance, nobody can really determine whether it's ball lightning or just a proliferation of very short-distance lightning strikes within the cloud, or even just a plane.
@Whee
Einstein was right: "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds...."
That's great. Any idea how we can tell the great minds from the mediocre idiots? There are people telling us that they have been abducted by aliens, can predict the future from tea leaves and that drinking water can cure you (homeopathy) amongst other things. The reason that people do not get believed is not some great scientific conspiracy it is simply that their signal gets lost in the overwhelming noise of idiots making stuff up. Scientists have better things to do than going around checking out every nut job that comes up with something on the off chance that this might be genuine.
It is a shame, because things do get missed and sometimes the short-sightedness of the "establishment" can indeed be a factor (an excellent example is John Harrison). However if you have to blame someone for why people are not believed blame the crystal ball gazers who make it almost impossible to determine those who are genuine.
I don't think so. I'm not too familiar with it, but I know that there are "sprites", "elves", "blue jets", and "gigantic jets" related to lightning. The reddish ones are the sprites, while jets are typically blue. Sprites tend to be less focused than a jet; jets are more like lighting, in a line, whereas the sprites are more spread. The pictures I've seen show them as more of a mushroom cloud-shaped thing.
Only xhtml has the "/" in the <br> tag
I'm finding it difficult to remember where I saw it, but I was struck by reading that "one way a crank can be distinguished from a genius is that a genius knows and appreciates the theories that are generally accepted today, but the crank ignores or derides them".