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Lightning-made Waves In Earth's Atmosphere Leak Into Space

Posted by Soulskill on from the great-now-the-fithp-will-find-us dept.

TheNextCorner sends this quote from NASA: "At any given moment about 2,000 thunderstorms roll over Earth, producing some 50 flashes of lightning every second. Each lightning burst creates electromagnetic waves that begin to circle around Earth, captured between Earth's surface and a boundary about 60 miles up. Some of the waves – if they have just the right wavelength – combine, increasing in strength, to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat known as Schumann resonance. ... NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space. This comes as a surprise, since current models of Schumann resonance predict these waves should be caged at lower altitude, between the ground and a layer of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere."

4 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. this is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    striking discovery

  2. Schumann ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    was a big proponent of cycles.

    (If 2 people get this, I'll be impressed ; )

  3. but but but by heinousjay · · Score: 3, Funny

    You mean atmospheric models aren't perfect predictors of atmospheric phenomena? DENIERS!

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  4. Re:The frequencies by dotancohen · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's about halfway between C1 and C#1 on the musical frequency scale.

    So, it's Java1?

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