What causes lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting

89 points Tomte3 days ago 19 comments

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nomilk|about 5 hours ago

That 7 second video of a small rocket shot into a cloud to induce a lightning strike (about half way down the article) is incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BJIiX9_c_M

Any ideas why the lightning strike appears mostly green (and momentarily purple and orange)?

postalcoder|about 2 hours ago

Copper emits a green-blue light in the flame test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwsexjcROH4

deepandmeaning|about 5 hours ago

I'm imagining it's something related to the copper wire.

teh_infallible|about 4 hours ago

I always wanted to replicate this with a helium balloon and a long, wet string coated with copper filings.

batch12|about 2 hours ago

You'd probably need a very large balloon to overcome the weight of the string

CamelCaseCondo|about 2 hours ago

Maybe just salt water and skip the filings?

freehorse|about 3 hours ago

Tl;dr lightings may be caused by electrons/positrons from outer space hitting a cloud and initiating an "avalanche" of electrons.

pfdietz|about 2 hours ago

Cosmic rays are mostly protons, not electrons or positrons. You're mixing up to separate theories in the article.

nirse|35 minutes ago

Well, the primary particles that hit the atmosphere are mostly protons. They cause avalanche of secondaires that are varied but mostly muons,

nephihaha|about 1 hour ago

Much of the time they occur when two weather fronts of different temperatures collide with each other.

metalman|about 5 hours ago

just in case you missed it, all matter carrys a charge, and all space(and matter) has energy radiating through it, making the universe an energy gradient.

sometimes you can see it happening.

fguerraz|about 3 hours ago

So, nothing new?

The cosmic ray hypothesis has been dominant for a few years now.

This magazine…

JadeNB|about 1 hour ago

> So, nothing new?

> The cosmic ray hypothesis has been dominant for a few years now.

> This magazine…

I think saying "This magazine…" as if the flaws of Quanta are well understood and agreed may need additional elaboration. If you mean that experts have known this—well, the role of Quanta is to disseminate and explain expert research to scientifically literate non-experts; it is not meant to be distributing the latest research itself.

joshikarthikey|about 2 hours ago

Soooo you are telling me that we still haven't fully understood something as fundamental as lightning and it's still an active area of research...

echelon|7 minutes ago

We don't even have an accurate mathematical description of how a single water molecule works.

We have so much scientific work to do.

dnnddidiej|about 1 hour ago

It is cool that something so seemingly ordinary is extraordinary.

nephihaha|about 1 hour ago

Never mind this kind of lightning, it gets really interesting when we start to look at ball lightning, which is very real but rarely sighted.

Tomte|about 1 hour ago

As a child I saw an acted segment about ball lightning in childrens‘ TV, following a person around the house, and had nightmares for a long time afterwards. The thing is spooky as hell.

JadeNB|about 1 hour ago

Not to be flip, but, depending on what "fully" means, we haven't fully understood much of anything about the real world.