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Strange Video of Dancing Cloud Explained By Electric Discharge
The Bad Astronomer writes "A few months ago I was sent a really weird video showing a cloud snapping around suddenly, far faster than wind could explain. I asked a meteorologist about it, who told me it was due to ice crystals re-aligning when the cloud's electric field discharged. It's pretty amazing to watch, and a great example of how many cool things happen right in front of us that we never notice."
I hope the cloud Franklins his ass.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
And since they won't be able to do it, the conclusion will be "busted" (even though it is actually possible).
I love the show, but when they conclude stuff because they can or can't do something it kind of pisses me off :(
Now all we have to do is figure out why the aliens are causing electric discharges and we can call this mystery solved!
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
Speaking as someone who took a couple meteorology courses in college, I can confirm the Bad Astronomer's observation: it is weird.
The Admin and the Engineer
It doesn't look like part of the cloud to me, the brightness and tint isn't quite right. It looks more like a reflection, as if there were glass between the camera and the sky, with something in the foreground reflecting at just the right place to make it look like part of the cloud.
Why couldn't a natural phenomenon be unique?
I remember someone explaining why the sky was blue by saying it was because it transmitted every colors but blue. That's not explaining, it's just saying it's blue. Some people seem ok with reformulating real world things with scientific words and believing it's an explanation.
Where's your account?
That's because nobody will live long enough to scientifically get to a single origin of anything (if there's one), so we draw the line somewhere until somebody advances it further.
Someone famous once said (I hope you can place it ;) ) : "To make an apple pie from scratch first you need to create the universe."
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
If somebody explains to you how colors work, it's up to you to have the basic faculty to understand the explanation. Saying that color x is the most reflected color of an object makes it color x is the most basic and accurate explanation of why a thing is one color and not another. To understand the subjectivity of color to the human mind would take a much more detailed explanation of the human retina and nervous system and the brain itself. To understand the greater depth of the physicality of light would require extensive discourse on the nature of electromagnetism, the creation and dissemination of photons, etc.
If you can't understand simple differences between absorbed light and reflected light, any further detail on the underlying subjects would be wasted breath.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Natural implies repetition. Repetition is needed for naturalness because without repetition you cannot analyze it and place it in the context of a larger systems, thus providing "explanation": "it's natural"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This may be the ground observation of Sprite Lightning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)
"We'll cross the minefield under the cover of daylight..." -A. Rimmer
My first thought was that it was some disturbance in the air between the photographer and the clouds causing diffraction that made the cloud appear to warp, but the ice crystal explanation seems to fit the picture better. It does remind me of pictures I've seen of ice halos - but I never heard they could "move" like that.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I think it was the virgin Mary getting jiggy with it.
Natural implies repetition.
Yeah, not buying that, so not reading the rest of your thought.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
There are new discoveries everyday. The day will come when we can cross stellar distances as easy as we now cross an ocean, Of that I have no doubt. Maybe not in my lifetime or my children's or even great grand children. But someday it will happen. How do I know this? All you have to do is look from where we have come. Each society in history has thought they knew all there is to know about the universe. We are not different I laugh in the face of any one who is pompous and arrogant enough to say It is impossible. What kind of hubris does it take to say "No, it’s impossible, the distances are too great”. Bullshit! We are only beginning to understand the physics of the universe, and we already know that there is at least one thing that is faster than light. Quantum entanglement is instantaneous no matter the distance. Although we have not yet figured a way to exploit this for FTL communications or travel, there is a some mechanism in the universe that underlies the observed results. There are many scientists working with Quantum entanglement, even as I write this. I even believe we will see FTL communications in my lifetime, and I am 48. But aside form communications, there are many other theories at the edge of our understanding that may open up space to easy travel someday. Warp Drive? No, we can't make it work yet, but what about in a hundred or a thousand years? Howe about Worm Holes? No, once again, not yet. But someday. And what other secrets are out there waiting to be discovered? We must keep trying. We must keep pushing, just as the great inventors before us did.
I know who said that! It was Agent Smith!
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
No, it's just some ghosts. Call the ghost busters.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
if it was a natural phenomenon, it should have happened before elsewhere, and it should have happened again.
Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK1g_5x2jBU
especially as it looks like repeated patterns.
I am guessing you are not using calculators with Polish notation.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Clearly, this is just a glitch in The Matrix.
It seems I've already read this several times in this thread ... oh wait, seeing the same thing again is a sign of a glitch in the Matrix. So you are obviously right! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Carl Sagan
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26980.html
Jesus saves and takes half damage.
He goes by Quantum Apostrophe on other sites, but Slashdot's karma system makes having an account impractical for him...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's an interesting way to define natural.
If the flock of chickens in my yard happen to stand such that they clearly spell out the word "unique", is that unnatural or just chance? What if they make a pattern that doesn't happen to be significant, but that we can't expect them ever to make again?
If there's only one universe, is it unnatural?
During my college orientation, among other activities, we were shown some kind of presentation where this woman claimed that pouring water into a red glass imbued it with some attributes associated with the color red. I knew it was bunk and raised my hand. When I was called on, I explained that the glass was red because it allowed all colors to pass through it except for the color red. This color was reflected back to our eyes. If it absorbed the red light, it wouldn't look red to us. So, given that the red light was reflected and all other colors absorbed (or allowed to pass through), shouldn't the water in the glass be "imbued" with the attributes of all colors except for red*?
She didn't like this question, much and I wasn't called on to ask any more questions.
* Of course, the "keep the story straight" quack answer could have been: "Well, absorbing the attributes of all colors except for red gives X effect. We'll shorthand this by saying it's 'imbued with the power of red.'" I wasn't going to do her job for her, though.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
'before' not being in the past 2 years. 'way before'.
Who says it hasn't?
show me.
Read radical news here
As suggested by a comment to the video, it appears to be some water on top of a piece of glass in front of the camera, being blown around.
HARP nothing, it's the Chupacabras that are doing it. With their minds. To communicate with bigfoot... who lives partway down the holes to hell and who are generating EM ghost signatures. With their minds. To confuse the witches that call in to Coast to Coast (formerly with Art Bell) into thinking they are possessed. All of which means NASA has been hiding evidence of life on mars from us. In order to misdirect our attention from the faked moon landings. [runs away, foaming at mouth]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There is the 'principle of mediocrity' which simply suggests that we shouldn't assume that we are in a special location in the universe. It's clear however that even though nature is composed of simple building blocks (at least the few percent of the universe that consists of baryonic matter and energy that we can detect) it is capable of immense variety as the laws of the universe unfold. The solar system with its eight planets is actually a good example, many celestial bodies are very distict, for example we only have one Io-like body in the solar system, one titan-like body, one earth, etc - for me this suggests that on this scale at least the variety of objects is likely to be vast. And that's really just physics/geology, once you get into biology it's a whole different paradigm.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I watch thunderstorms very closely. 2 summers ago I saw a thunderstorm over my hometown of Baltimore and saw exactly this kind of behavior. It was like the entire side of the cloud tower suddenly bent and twisted around. It looked impossibly huge and fast moving at the time, like a huge piece of sheet metal snapping around suddenly. It definitely smacked of some kind of electrical related effect. Very cool to see this confirmed.
When I was called on, I explained that the glass was red because it allowed all colors to pass through it except for the color red. This color was reflected back to our eyes.
Nice theory, except that red light is transmitted through a red glass, not reflected off it, as you could verify by the simple experiment of holding that glass up to a light source. So, the opposite of what you just said is the case. No wonder your teacher was annoyed with the question.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I've seen better fakes on ghost hunting shows.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Actually, it's been quite documented the moon landings were in fact real.
It just wasn't our moon.
Froth over that one buddy!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I'm trying to think of how they could test this by blowing something up. If they can't do that, then I'm not sure they'll bother
I am guessing you are not using calculators with Polish notation.
When I was a juvenile I heard a racist joke; it was something like Q: "What do you find in a Polack's nose?" A: "Fingerprints." Of course, at this young age I did not know different nations, but I did know fish. So I thought it was exceedingly odd that, first, the fish pollock has noses; second, that people wanted to look inside them; and third, that they would find that other people had already been digitally exploring in there! (Later I learned the national meaning, and the joke became a lot less stupendous -- and more simply mean.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Why the fuck do people record video on their phone in the vertical position? There are so many cases of this.. morons.
There was a rather large field campaign called The Severe Thunderstorm Electrification and Precipitation Study (STEPS) to study electrification done around the year 2000 that involved the use of polarimetric weather radar to observe electrified storms, in conjunction with the New Mexico Tech Lightning Monitoring Array (LMA).
One of the nice things about polarimetric radar is the ability to measure the aggregate orientation of particles, including ice crystals. When scanning active electrified storms, the radars observed polarimetric signatures indicating increased vertical orientation of particles aloft (ice crystals), which then suddenly snapped back to roughly random orientation. This event corresponded well with measurements from the LMA. In other words, they could, using radar, predict lightning strikes. I love science!
Not natural does not imply unnatural. In other words, "unnatural" needs another definition. I am offering you a consistent definition of "natural" as a set of things that could be a subject of a scientific method.
Unnatural in common usage means something that seems to be created by intelligent will, going in some way against the natural order of things. But we have to know that to claim that. For most of the things that are unique we simply do not know anything to imply either intelligent will or some unknown natural law. They are not natural and not unnatural.
Chickens, yard, spelling and standing are all natural events by itself as well as some of the combinations. If chickens in your yard or around the world repeatedly spell "unique" - then it could be a subject of scientific study. If they did it once, there is nothing to study scientifically.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I do not know what to make out of your comment, but just in case you or somebody else does not know and is too lazy to look up the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation
In some ways Polish_notation is opposite to the way we usually do arithmetic. That is why when I first formulated the thesis and then brought the argumentation, I brought the allusion to Polish notation, implying that NatasRevol did not recognize the structure of my comment (the other possibility of course is that this user simply rejected the thesis outright not even considering reading the argumentation)
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I see. You're defining "natural" jargonistically, rather than for everyday (or even casual philosophical) conversation. For a second there I thought you were being philosophical.
http://xkcd.com/645/
Yeah, I left out the thought (somewhat expressed in the XKCD link) which was the source of my post: I recalled it as Reverse Polish Notation, and seeing it without the Reverse caused me to take a trip down memory lane. And now that I read the link, I've learned something new: there is an inverse form of the RPN I learned long ago, which has the operators in front. I'm guessing the calculator (and Forth, etc) creators chose to reverse it, as that makes stack-based operations easier. Anyway, enjoy!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.