Electrical phenomena in nature

From time immemorial, mankind has tried to logically explain the various electrical phenomena, examples of which they observed in nature. Thus, in ancient times lightning was considered a sure sign of the wrath of the gods, medieval seamen blissfully fluttered before the fires of St. Elm, and our contemporaries are extremely afraid of meeting with fireballs.

All these are electrical phenomena. In nature, everything, even you and I, carries an electrical charge. If objects with large charges of different polarities approach each other, then a physical interaction appears, the visible result of which becomes the stained, usually yellow or violet, flow of cold plasma between them. Its current ceases as soon as the charges in both bodies are balanced.

The most common electrical phenomena in nature are lightning. Every second several hundred hit them on the surface of the Earth. Lightnings choose their goal, usually detached high objects, because, according to physical laws, to transfer a strong charge you need the shortest distance between a thundercloud and the Earth's surface. To protect buildings from lightning, their owners install roof lightning rods on the roofs, which are high metal structures with grounding, which, when lightning strikes, allows the entire discharge to be discharged into the soil.

The lights of St. Elm are another electrical phenomenon, the nature of which has remained unclear for a very long time. Seamen mostly dealt with him. The lights manifested themselves as follows: when the ship hit the storm, the tops of its masts began to blaze with a bright flame. Explanation of the phenomenon was very simple - the fundamental role played by the high voltage of the electromagnetic field, which is always observed before the beginning of a thunderstorm. But not only sailors can deal with lights. Pilots of large airliners also encountered this phenomenon, when flying through clouds of ash thrown into the sky by volcanic eruptions. Lights arise from the friction of ash particles on the skin.

Both the lightning and the lights of St. Elm are electrical phenomena that many saw, but with ball lightning it was not possible to collide with everyone. Their nature has not been studied to the end. Usually, eyewitnesses describe ball lightning as a bright luminous formation of a spherical shape, chaotically moving in space. Three years ago, a theory was put forward that questioned the reality of their existence. If earlier it was believed that a variety of ball lightning - it's electrical phenomena, the theory suggested that they are nothing more than hallucinations.

There is another phenomenon that has an electromagnetic nature - the northern lights. It occurs due to the influence of the solar wind on the upper layers of the atmosphere. The Northern Lights are like flashes of various colors and are fixed, as a rule, in rather high latitudes. There are, of course, exceptions - if the solar activity is high enough, then the radiance can be seen in the sky and inhabitants of temperate latitudes.

Electrical phenomena are quite an interesting object of study for physicists across the planet, since most of them require detailed justification and serious study.