Naked Science - Lightning

faster than a speeding bullet six times hotter than the surface of the Sun it seems to defy the laws of gravity and can strike you dead lightly now we reveal dramatic new discoveries shocking experiments that prove lightning is one of the weirdest most destructive and important phenomena on earth you lightning strikes giant sparks of static electricity tear through the atmosphere at 60 million miles an hour up to a billion volts rip the air apart in that instant the current creates light waves we see a brilliant bolt of light race across the sky Aaron son eats up to more than 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit it expands so rapidly it explodes we hear a deafening clap of thunder it all happens in less than the blink of an eye up to eight million times every day this is one of nature's most frequent best observed phenomenon but it's also one of the least understood we probably know more about how a star explodes halfway across the galaxy then how lightning works just a few miles above our head scientists are using every technological tool in the box to see lightning as it's never been seen before and they're discovering that it's more powerful you're talking about something that's up to a billion volts it's 200,000 amps the unlucky small nuclear power plant if it's huge and more important than ever imagined it's probably one of those fundamental parts of the equation that really contribute to life on Earth to unlock its secrets we follow a lightning bolt on its journey from creation to destruction and we know few people have experienced lightnings awesome power more closely than former stockbroker Michael Utley may 2000 at leas playing golf at his local course in Cape Cod Massachusetts overhead a storm gathers 30,000 amps of electricity burns its way through the atmosphere at 60 million miles an hour and heads straight toward Utley the warning siren sounds it's the last thing he remembers the first thing that I remember after the strike was 38 days after it happened in less than half a second his life changed forever I opened my eyes and realized I was in an ambulance and I had a trach so I couldn't speak so it was kind of like The Godfather and I where am I and he looked at me he said you're on your way to rehab you were struck by lightning a month ago Utley never saw the bolt that hit him he has no memory of that terrible day we reconstruct those missing moments and step into at least shoes to follow a lightning bolt as it rips through the body and examine its devastating effects in forensic detail we begin with the moment of impact lightning strikes electricity tears through your body and stops your heart dead the Lightning goes through the body and it stops the heart and the you're 100% dependent on somebody around you to do CPR at that point so just laying there you're not breathing your heart stopped and that's it resuscitation brings you back to love but your heart rate is still around the race is on to reach the ER the emergency department at the University of Illinois in Chicago gets struck by lightning in the Windy City and this could be the first place you'll come and the first person you'll see will probably be dr. Mary Ann Cooper emergency m.d. and head of the lightning injury research program the number one cause of death from lightning is cardiac arrest at the time of the injury the current hitch is a lift on the body's own electrical highway route one the autonomic nervous system it runs down your spine and controls and voluntary functions breathing digestion heartbeat routes 2 & 3 blood and muscle full of electrolytes acids salts and other chemicals essential for life and electrically conductive together they offer the current a route through the body straight to your heart the heart's internal pacemaker generates electrical curls that control its rhythm hit this with a high voltage current and the rhythm is disrupted or worse but even if you survived the shock a series of bizarre and traumatic injuries could still assault your body a strike can cause blood vessels to spasm and leave you temporarily paralyzed look at the extremities they're cold model blue look for all the world like they're dead I was pretty much paralyzed and I couldn't swallow I couldn't talk I just thought my body was completely fried for utley nerve and muscle damage means years of grueling rehab but some injuries last a lifetime a strike near the head sends current into the eyes and can detach the retina the shock wave can rupture the eardrums and can sometimes fracture the skull lightning flowers known as Lichtenberg marks the current ruptures tiny capillaries to create a fossilized record of its journey across the skin the same process can sometimes be seen on a golf course but not all the effects of lightning are is easy to see I am definitely not the same person that my wife married prior to the incident I've changed before the strike Utley was a ski instructor an extreme sports enthusiast I used to have an edge I used to be very very good now I'm still pretty good if I find all in those I kind of kid it's frustrating it's without a doubt you live life on a much different level you survive the strike you look okay on the outside but inside you're weak in pain you've changed and doctors say it's almost impossible to find the cause many strike survivors have faced this nightmare scenario until now at the University of Illinois in Chicago scientists have a new weapon to hunt for the hidden cause of these complaints dr. Keith Colburn leads the search this patients Anatomy is completely normal you can see the gray matter here nicely delineated and the white manner and they're completely symmetrically normal in flies for a patient of this age but this MRI scan belongs to a strike survivor he complains of a short attention span irritability and memory loss but according to the scan there's nothing wrong so are his symptoms simply psychological maybe not a regular MRI scan takes a snapshot of the brain functional MRI makes a movie using this doctors can now see the brain in action could functional MRI shed new light on this man's mysterious symptoms we put the technology to the test two subjects our strike survivor and a regular member of the public both take the same simple reading test but the strike survivors brain behaves in a very different way you see a lot more activation in the left temple of the area associated with understanding what is being read we see no activation in the left frontal lobe which is the area associated with the expression of language so this patients pattern of activation is completely reversed from normal in these areas associated with with reading the pink areas show that the strike victim not only employs a different part of the brain but also uses a lot more energy to complete the test and he's finding the task much more difficult than the normal subject but why in a normal brain electrical currents carry orders and information along a network of nerves the current reaches a gap called a synapse and triggers the release of a chemical a neurotransmitter a receptor catches it on the other side and delivers the message but gets struck by lightning and this network can break down the current has to take an indirect route for now dr. Thorne and his team are in the early stages of research but one day functional MRI may help them to pinpoint and treat the cause of strike survivors mysterious symptoms lightnings deadly trail of destruction from the nerves to the heart nothing is safe but despite all this 90% of strike victims survived survivor Michael Utley wants to know why to find out Utley will witness a dramatic demonstration at lightning technologies in Pittsfield Massachusetts what we're doing here is trying to see how the Lightning might flash across the surface of a human being chief engineer Andy Plummer is in charge of testing and devising lightning protection systems his plan to hit this mannequin with one mega volt of electricity and recreate the split seconds that changed Michael's life forever I would imagine that it wouldn't take much of the current to stop the heart I think it doesn't take very much even if 90% of it goes outside the little bit that goes through it does enough they recreate conditions on the golf course Utley was holding a putter metal conducts electricity it was a hot day he was sweating this too is conductive could these two factors explain his survival human sweat has a little bit of connectivity so Bob here is putting just some salt solution just to simulate the conductivity that existed on you the day you were struck by lightning excellent okay Bob start charging five four three two one the strike is so fast that we need to freeze the moment of impact sweat conducts the huge bolt of electricity down the body's right side the metal putter provides a path to the ground the lethal current is diverted away from the major organs we can say of the experiment suggests that for most strike survivors there are other factors at play such as the putter or the sweat diverting the deadly current and explaining their survival it seems Utley may owe his life to these two simple things it's a life he's still battling to rebuild today he enjoys a regular game of golf and uses the very same putter that saved his life but he takes no chances if there was one thing that I could tell people about lightning it would be when Thunder roars go indoors there's no play safe outside in a thunderstorm we've seen lightnings deadly force now we need to know what it is what creates this awesome power that quest takes us to one of the world's stormiest places and some of the most spectacular Lightning on earth [Music] we're following a lightning boat on its journey through the atmosphere we've seen what happens when a storm unleashes its awesome power now let's rewind to the moments before lightning strikes to investigate what triggers this mysterious phenomenon our journey takes us to a city that's home to some of the world's most violent lightning storms Darwyn northern Australia in just a few hours it can take as many as 1600 strikes Darwin is the perfect place to investigate one of nature's biggest mysteries what sparks a lightning bolt an international team of scientists are here to find out they use radar and a fleet of aircraft to look for the answer deep inside Darwin's monster storm clouds [Music] a potent cocktail of heat and moisture op Eclair means these are no ordinary clouds called cumulonimbus they can rise up to 40,000 feet at speeds of 60 miles an hour [Music] 13 miles up twice as high as a passenger jet above the storm a modified former Russian spy plane collects data about the cloud below somewhere inside this cloud lightning is preparing to strike understanding how as puzzled scientists for centuries but they think the cloud acts as a giant electrical generator inside the cloud tiny water droplets rise upward they freeze and fall back down as ice they rub against each other electrically charged particles transfer from one to the other the water and ice particles that were previously neutral are now either positively or negatively charged the negative particles sink to the bottom of the cloud the positive rise to the top separating the positive and negative charges when they reunite lightning will strike that's the theory but the reality is even stranger air is not a good conductor electricity can't pass through it easily to let the current through the airs atomic structure must literally break apart to do that takes millions even billions of volts scientists search the skies for this huge electrical charge but even in Darwin's massive storm clouds it's never been found in the story of lightning there's a piece missing it's a puzzle that fascinates physicist Joe Dwyer from Florida Institute of Technology lightning is almost embarrassing we've been studying lightning since the time of Franklin and Eve over 200 years we still haven't answered the big questions how does lightning work how does it get started up in the thunderstorms how does it propagate for miles through the air from way up there were it's initiated down to our feet one thing we can be sure of lightning is static electricity and you can make it at home let me take my shoes off and when I do I'm going to rub my feet on the carpet because I rub my feet friction is going to separate electrical charge positive charge is going one way negative charge the other now when charges separate they want to get back together a large electric field can build up and when this happens you can get a spark we think that something like that is going on inside the thundercloud when it makes lightning to send a current across this tiny distance takes up to 25,000 volts but lightning bolts can be up to 120 miles long sending a current through this much air takes millions of volts a massive electrical charge that's so far scientists have failed to find yapped as well where is the finger that's concentrating the charge to making the big fields to produce the spark and we're having a really hard time figuring out what that finger is thunderstorms are vani lightning is unpredictable getting close enough to make measurements is virtually impossible scientists can't get to the lightning so at the University of Florida's international center for lightning research they bring the lightning to the scientists what we did is that we used rocket triggered lightning you can tell lightning where and when to strike Dwyer in the team fire a rocket into a charged storm cloud ready to fire arming rocket five four three two one fire it travels a copper one the acts like a lightning conductor millions of volts of electricity race from the cloud to the ground Dwyer uses data from this to investigate how lightning can pass fluid miles of air and he looks for the answer in outer space in a galaxy far away a star explodes millions of microscopic electrically charged particles are forced out into space these are cosmic rays traveling at nearly the speed of light they race across millions of miles millions of light years to reach Earth Dwyer wonders could cosmic rays explain how electricity travels through miles of air billions of these rays bombard our planet every second they're invisible and inaudible but when a cosmic ray travels through the atmosphere it momentarily rips apart the airs molecular structure this produces x-rays electromagnetic waves of radiation which can be measured could cosmic rays be the missing link in the story of a lightning bolt it sounds like science fiction even the optimistic dwyer thinks it's a long shot when we got our first triggered lightning and made her first x-ray measurements I didn't even get around to working at the data for a couple weeks so I wasn't really expecting to see anything when I sat down finally there on the screen was an x-ray pulse right when the Lightning occurred I thought what's the chance of that happening I mean right there at the same time so we looked at the next stroke and there was another pulse even bigger this is the next stroke another pulse another pulse with the next stroke every time we looked we saw big bursts of x-rays hitting our instrument the exact time that lightning struck - Dwyer it's a clue something has changed the Ayres atomic structure and he thinks that something could be cosmic rays for centuries we've been laboring under the assumption the Lighting's just a normal kind of discharge like the finger touching the doorknob we suddenly see now that this was wrong if Dwyers right when a cosmic ray hits a cloud it causes a huge momentary surge in electricity enough to create a spark but too brief to be measured the Rey hurdles on toward the ground the super fast-moving particles collide with air molecules and rip them apart for a fraction of a second the air becomes electrically conductive and provides a path down which the current can run now lightning can strike a channel of negative electrical charge shoots from the bottom of a cloud it heads toward the ground in rapid steps each takes just 50 millionths of a second as it gets closer it has a strange effect on the ground below positive particles in the ground or in objects on it are drawn up toward their negative counterparts a storm cloud can create dozens of these negative and positive channels most don't connect but when they do millions of volts of electricity race between the cloud and the ground lightning travels up as well as down the air like so we see lightning strike here the air explode in the following thousandth of a second any remaining charge in the cloud surges up and down the channel the bolt may appear to flicker lightning really does strike more than once and all this happens up to 8 million times every day 100 times a second lightning is one of nature's most common phenomena and if joe dryers Aries are right it's also one of the most incredible if these ideas are correct then there may be a connection between the lightning that we see in a star exploding halfway across the galaxy in a million years ago in less than half a second we've traveled from strike to spark impact to creation as we follow a lightning bolt now in the moments after impact we enter a bizarre world of fireballs UFOs and ghostly apparitions we're following a lightning bolt on its journey through the atmosphere we've traced its origins investigated the terrible moment of impact now our quest takes us to the moments after lightning strikes to a Twilight world that seems to come straight from the pages of a science fiction comic March 19 1963 Eastern Airlines flight PA 539 from New York to Washington five minutes past midnight the plane encounters a storm there's a loud bang and a bright flash seconds later a glowing ball emerges from the pilots cabin the blue-white ball hovers above the aisle and float slowly toward the rear of the plane it reaches the back of the plane and vanishes remarkably the plane continues unharmed but this wasn't fantasy this was fact and it wasn't the first account of its kind in World War two pilots reported strange balls of light that seemed to follow their planes US pilots named them Foo Fighters [Music] but thousands of years people have claimed to encounter fiery spheres as ghosts messages from the gods or UFOs but there was something different about the Eastern Airlines account the eyewitness wasn't an adrenaline-fueled fighter pilot or a medieval mystic he was a scientist a professor at a prestigious British university suddenly scientists at up and took notice one scientist who's been inspired by his own close encounter his nuclear physicist dr. Graham Hubler I have seen ball lightning myself so I would I know that it exists a teenage uvula is on a date in a park in upstate New York a storm breaks out the couple takes shelter in a Bandstand and suddenly off to our left we're sitting there with open sides on a lift in the front off to the left and saw this ball approaching ball of light and of course we were terrified what the heck was this we didn't know what it was slowly the ball approaches it was about thirty yards away and coming slowly at us just a drifting ambling along drifting along and we're looking at this thing and and just we were both just paralyzed actually to their horror it enters the band's path and rolls across the floor past the couple's feet with a strange sound the founder was making it like a freshly struck match at the other side of the bandstand the ball leaps back up and travels out of the open side and it jumped right back up to about six feet off the ground and went out another twenty thirty feet out into the night and then very quickly dropped to the ground and extinguished without a noise the experience leaves you blur with a lifelong fascination with ball lightning it collects thousands of eyewitness accounts there's multiple ball lightning balls that fell from the sky that exploded his fun hovered jumped it's even been seen to pass through solid objects without leaving a trace there is no good theory that exists that explains the features of ball lightning different theories can explain one or two of the features of ball lightning but none none really do a very good job of explaining at all one man who's examined all the evidence investigated all the theories this physicist Mark Stenhouse there are probably almost as many theories of ball lightning as there have been scientists investigating it but there is one thing almost everyone agrees on ball lightning is probably plasma plasma is the commonest form of matter in the universe the Sun fire lightning and the space between the stars are all plasma it's not hard to make plasma run a current through a gas and it will spontaneously emit light but explaining how a fiery ball can materialize out of thin air has confounded scientists for centuries I think as soon as we we see something we can't explain particularly something as bizarre as that we have a tendency to move outside our normal frames of reference and explain things using if you like rather supernatural kinds of explanations one of the more sensible theories is that ball lightning is produced by a rare phenomenon known as bead lightning this footage shows a lightning bolt that appears to break into small beads some scientists argue that ball lightning is a plasma beam that's become separated from the bolt but there's one big problem eyewitnesses talk of balls lasting minutes these beads vanish in less than half a second we don't know of a way in which we create a plasma in the atmosphere that self-contained that would survive for many seconds it will a plasma would provide plenty of energy but it wouldn't be able to survive for that period of time so if ball lightning isn't part of a lightning bolt could it be the product of one this strange-looking stone is the fossilized remnant of a lightning strike lightning strikes sandy soil heat and current spread through the ground everything in its path fuses into a solid tube this is nature's own glass it's called a fulgurite and can stretch to depths of 15 feet when the tube is formed dust is pushed up into the atmosphere this detonation replicates the effect could something as simple as dust hold the key to this centuries-old mystery laboratory experiments prove a tiny dust ball holds its shape and ignites in an area of electrical charge it could explain hue blurs account but not the eastern airlines one it's extremely difficult to imagine how any chemical process could actually if you like invade the space inside the aircraft for now ball lightning remains a mystery but if science can unlock its secrets ball lightning could turn out to be more than just a curiosity it's even possible it could hold the key to a completely new source of energy evidently contains energy just the sheer process of glowing is sufficient to require some energy and if we could harness that energy who knows what the future might hold ball lightning surely exists so it's either known physics that we have to put together in ways we haven't followed before or it's a totally new physical phenomena which is very exciting that will lead us into some new new technology or new physics the mystery of ball lightning is yet to be solved and it's not the only strange phenomenon to occur in the moments after lightning strikes look above the clouds and the story gets even stranger who was there well yeah you see it yeah on our journey following a lightning bolt we ventured beyond the frontiers of science but this is just the beginning seconds after lightning strikes high above a thundercloud a strange new phenomenon appears July 6th 1989 physicists from the University of Minnesota test out a new low-light camera they plan to use it for a high-altitude rocket experiment they point the camera east a random choice at some stars and what looks like a distant thunderstorm they play the tape back something catches their attention to funnel-shaped flashes of light they last for just a few thousandths of a second the team estimates that the flashes are 20 miles above the clouds and an astonishing 12 miles tall by pure chance they've captured something new to science from his research lab at Duke University North Carolina professor Steve comer searches for these strange specters that exciting to be part of something fundamentally new that no one else has seen before and it's kind of a big surprise that these things have been there the whole time and nobody knew about the twin pillars of lights flicker above a thunderstorm in the distance so what are they you around the world lightning scientists are on the hunt to find out they don't have to look far scientists review hundreds of hours of video taken from the space shuttle to their amazement there are dozens of these strange apparitions just waiting to be identified low-light cameras are trained on the skies high altitude aircraft fly above storms soon there are thousands of recorded sightings everybody was surprised by how common they in fact were it's just one of those cases once you know what you're looking for all the sudden you see a lot of them scientists call them sprites because of their elusive ghostly appearance they seem to dance above the thunder clouds in the night sky in groups of two or three they last less than 10 thousandths of a second researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks calculate they occur in the middle atmosphere 25 to 60 miles above the earth and can extend up to 30 miles across observations suggests sprites are related to lightning but how in a field in North Carolina antennae pick up the radio signals produced by lightning steve comer uses these to listen to the radio noise made by individual lightning bolts the equipment is so sensitive he can detect lightning as it happens anywhere on earth every one of these individual pulses is one of those radio pulses from a lightning stroke somewhere in the globe comer uses this data to measure the size of each bolt he matches this with sightings of sprites from other research stations a pattern emerges sprites occur in the fractions of a second after lightning strikes but only after the most powerful lightning bolts comer thinks this huge release of energy causes a disturbance in the atmosphere above this high-speed footage the most detailed film of a sprite ever shot supports commerce theory 45 miles up electrical charge momentarily increases it triggers a giant spark millions of electrically charged particles accelerate outward at 33 million feet per second surprice tend to be about 40 miles high the bottom here is maybe 25 miles and the top is 60 or 65 mile sprites come in many shapes and sizes from the so called a bomb sprite up to 60 miles in diameter to a tall skinny one less than a mile wide and nicknamed the Diet Sprite five years after the first sprite was spotted researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks hunt for sprites high above a monster storm they use a sensitive low-light camera and capture the first ever color images of sprites it's a spectacular surprise what causes this colorful display with each new discovery come new questions but sprites are elusive unpredictable and almost impossible to observe at close range so Earl Williams from MIT made his own he calls it sprite in a bottle in a disused printing Factory in Brockton Massachusetts Williams and his team use a Plexiglas tube an old steering wheel and plenty of ingenuity to create their very own sprite they recreate conditions in the middle atmosphere 50 miles above the earth there is the good sprite light we start with the tube filled with air at atmospheric pressure like the air in this room we're breathing with vacuum pumps beneath the table we pump the tube down to pressures corresponding to 50 mile altitude by running an electrical current through the tube they create a magical light show it's the same process that lights up Las Vegas the neon gas and these tubes is invisible but run a current through it and it produces coloured light in the atmosphere most of the gas is nitrogen hit the air near the ground with a current and it produces a dazzling white light but change the pressure and the color changes 250 miles up in the Earth's atmosphere low pressure means nitrogen produces red light but as the sprite stretches toward Earth air pressure increases under gravity the color changes to purple and then blue in the skies sprites last less than 10 thousandths of a second but with the sprite in the bottle Williams can study the forces that shape them in his own time but even in the controlled conditions of the lab the sprite is a volatile creature here what I'm gonna let in air give me all your gut oh that's a nice oh that's me I like that my slab is straights are very much alive and as you can see the patterns in the tube are very much alive moving and writhing around and very unsteady well that's not look at that the bottle lets Williams look deep inside the hidden world of sprites I've never seen how on before and discover there may be even stranger phenomena waiting to be found sprite scientists expect the unexpected but even they aren't prepared for this beautiful Puerto Rico 2001 a jet of blue light shoots from the top of a thundercloud and travels over 40 miles into the sky other sightings confirm this is not a sprite it travels up not down from the cloud not the middle atmosphere it's an entirely new species called a blue jet when I saw videos I was like huh that's pretty spectacular wonder what those are blue Jets are of a mystery that nobody really knows what it takes to generate them and it doesn't stop there next coming even rarer species elves a pulse from a lightning bolt triggers a horizontal halo of light about 60 miles above the earth that spreads out rapidly to a diameter of up to 250 miles just about everybody who is gone with a new instrument or to a new region of the world to look above under storms for something new they have found something new sprites blue Jets elves a cast of characters straight out of a fairy tale but are they as benign as their names jest what would it be like to encounter one at close range NASA test pilots fly through a regular lightning storm it's a bumpy ride but it's a safe one Oh what it all looks like modern aircrafts are designed to take a direct strike the current flows along and away from its frame and continues to the ground a regular lightning bolt is about the width of a pencil but these monsters can be up to 200 miles across aircraft can operate in the same altitude as blue jets and spacecraft pass through the same altitude as sprites and elves what would it be like to fly through one of these mysterious phenomena that is one of the questions that we're trying to answer what is happening inside them and that could that pose a threat to aircraft or anything else that spends time and in those altitudes so far no damage from us right blue jet or elde has been reported but while investigations continue it remains a possibility lightnings weird offspring inhabit a world that we've only glimpsed too high for balloon or aircraft samples too low for satellites like the depths of the oceans nobody knows what other creatures wait to be discovered since there have been so many things discovered in the last 15 years new things that would not surprise me at all if there were if there were more things out there waiting to be discovered we followed a lightning bolt on its way through the Earth's atmosphere from its devastating impact on the ground to it's spectacular after-effects above the clouds now our journey takes us into outer space as we discover why life as we know it could depend on we followed lightning from creation to destruction and beyond now we travel into space for the final stage of lightning strange journey the Cold War a top-secret u.s. operation code name starfish prime the objective to investigate the effects of a nuclear war in space July 9th 1962 a 1.5 Megaton nuclear warhead is detonated 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean the explosion takes place in an area of natural radiation called the Van Allen belts wrapped around the earth like two giant Donuts they're full of deadly radioactive particles and a threat to astronauts and satellites at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington DC Jim Green monitors the radiation in the belts it's a very hazardous area because these particles are moving so fast they'll move through skin through flesh tissues also through spacecraft damaging delicate circuits and eventually leading to satellites that will no longer function in space between the belts is an area with much less radiation called the safe slot it's home to commercial satellites operating in the safety of its low radiation environment but the starfish prime warhead sends a massive dose of radiation straight into the safe slot radiation levels soar satellites cease to function but then just a few weeks later the slot is free of radiation NASA scientists are stunned something has recreated the safe slot what we have been on the hunt to determine why that slot region is there ever since soon there's a breakthrough researchers realize violent solar storms pump radioactive particles into space when these head in our direction radiation saturates the safe slot then as if by magic it clears and the slot becomes safe again but not all at once and that's the vital clue whatever clears the safe slot seems to be more effective at some times than others it's more intense on the day side than it is on the night side and it's more intense during the summer than it is in the winter the evidence points to the Sun but in 2004 Green takes a chance look at a magazine and everything changes an article on the distribution of lightning captures his attention the beautiful maps of lightning changed my concept of where lightning was was actually being generated drew my attention to the article immediately green notices lightning exhibits exactly the same characteristics as the clearance of the safe slot it occurs more overland than seeing more during the day than night more in the summer than the winter it's a match that was the time that we then knew that this had to be related to phenomena that was occurring on the earth and the only thing of course that no enters into space is lightning but how could lightning on earth affect the safe slot four thousand miles up unliking volt tears through the air it doesn't just produce light and sound it also creates radio waves turn on your radio when there's a storm nearby and you can hear them as interference but tune in with an all frequencies receiver and you can pick up more than just crackle this UE whistling is the sound of those radio waves after they've traveled in space what we've been listening to our lightning spirits these are emissions that occur from lightning hundreds of miles away that are propagated to us and are received in our antennas Green realizes that these radio waves are the missing link they connect lightning on earth with the safe slot in space we never realize the importance that the ground is having on space in 2005 Jim and his team come up with a radical new theory less than a second after a lightning strike on earth the radio wave reaches the radiation belts there it interacts with the electrically charged particles the radiation it forces the particles out of the safe slot the radiation is cleared and the safe slot returns to normal we always had thought about lightning in the past I believe as a destructive mechanism but I think we're discovering many of its beneficial factors if Green is right without lightning radiation would soon fill the safe slot satellites would go down taking out many things we've come to rely on global communications navigation systems cell phones satellite television all could shut down life as we know it would grind to a halt if lightning stop tomorrow we would see a dramatic change in the way we today it's probably one of those fundamental parts of the equation that really contribute to life on earth lightning for millions of years it stopped our darkest visions struck terror through our oldest mix now we're closer than ever to unlocking its secrets and the more we discover the more lightning defies expectation its origins may lie far beyond our world it can take strange forms and create dazzling light shows lightning is devastating beautiful and essential to life as we know it the incredible journey of a lightning bolt from outer space to the inner workings of the human body life and death destruction and creation all in less than the blink of an eye you

Channel: Naked Science

Views: 206,872

Rating: 4.7247157 out of 5

Keywords: lightning, strike, strangest, phenomena, stroke, bolt, birth, clouds, bead, plasma, ball, weird, whistlers, thunderstorm, cosmic, rays, golfer, struck, reveal, hit, voltage, survive, weirdest, odd, extraterrestrial, elves, real, myth, stunning, footage, sprites, volts, current, sky, deafening, nature, lethal, power, amps, electrostatic, discharge, survivor, electrical, cause, death, brain, scan, victim, energy, megavolt, mysterious, twilight, superbolt, forked, zone, blue, jets, atmospheric, space, flash, sound, solar, research, flying, cumulonimbus

Id: i4pWocmL82M

Length: 50min 3sec (3003 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Cybercommie]

Thanks for that, a great laugh