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I heard that lightning is triggered by cosmic ray particles. A seed in a supersaturated solution situation. And cosmic rays always come from very very far away
by swayvil 6y ago
I heard that lightning is triggered by cosmic ray particles. A seed in a supersaturated solution situation.
And cosmic rays always come from very very far away.
So a lightning bolt is literally an amplified message from beyond.
- ryder9 6y agono it's not, that's not how lightning works
- temp0826 6y agoI don’t think that’s always the case as it doesn’t really account for ground-to-cloud lightning strikes
- swayvil 6y agoWell I dunno about "always the case", but it's certainly accountable for ground-to-cloud. What the seed does is create a place of high potential. I think which way the lightning flows is arbitrary at that point.
- dms_ucsc 6y agoThe case in the paper I linked above was an intracloud flash, but nearly all cloud-to-ground flashes also start with a breakdown up in the cloud, so I agree that any model of lightning initiation can apply to both intracloud and cloud-to-ground flashes.
- swayvil 6y agoNavajo mythology says that a man who was struck by lightning cannot be trusted. Not because he's evil or damaged, but because he has been touched by profound alienness. He's too weird to predict.
- dms_ucsc 6y agoPeople in the field have gone back and forth on this, but you might like this paper, which is the best piece of evidence I've seen for it in a specific case of a specific flash. Look in particular at Figure 6 to see the lightning breakdown starting just at the ionization front (curved surface) of the cosmic ray shower: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019JD032273 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...