Lightning: where does the interesting facts come from?

Many people are afraid of the terrible phenomenon of nature - thunderstorms. This usually happens when the sun is closed by gloomy clouds, thunderous thunder and heavy rain.

Of course, you should be afraid of lightning, because it can even kill or cause a fire. This is known for a long time, therefore, and invented various means to protect against lightning and thunder (for example, metal poles).

What is going on up there and where does thunder come from? And how does lightning arise?

Storm clouds

The storm clouds are usually huge. In height, they reach several kilometers. Visually it is not visible, as inside of these rattling clouds all is boiling and boiling. This turbulent flow of air, which includes droplets of water, move with great speed from the bottom up and vice versa.

The uppermost part of these clouds reaches -40 degrees in temperature, and drops of water falling into this part of the cloud freeze.

On the origin of thunderclouds

Before we know where the thunder comes from and how lightning arises, let's briefly describe how thunderclouds form.

Most of these phenomena occur not over the water surface of the planet, but over continents. In addition, thunderclouds are intensively formed over the continents of tropical latitudes, where at the ground surface air (unlike air above the water surface) is very warm and rises rapidly upwards.

Usually, on the slopes of different heights, a similar upward flow of warm air is formed, which draws in itself moist air from the vast areas of the earth's surface and lifts it up.

Thus, so-called cumulus clouds are formed, turning into thunderclouds described above.

And now let's clarify what is lightning, where does it come from?

Lightning and thunder

Of those frozen drops, pieces of ice are formed, which also move in the clouds at a tremendous rate, colliding, collapsing and charging with electricity. Those ice cubes that are lighter and smaller remain above, and those that are bigger - melt, going down, again turning into droplets of water.

Thus, two electric charges arise in a thundercloud. In the upper part negative, in the bottom - positive. When meeting different charges, a powerful electrical discharge occurs and lightning occurs. Where does it come from, it became clear. And then what happens? The lightning flash instantly warms up and expands the air around it. The latter heats up so much that an explosion effect occurs. This is the thunder that frightens all life on earth.

It turns out that all these are manifestations of atmospheric electricity. Then the next question arises as to whether the last is taken, and in such large quantities. And where does it go?

Ionosphere

What is lightning, where does it come from, found out. Now a little about the processes that preserve the Earth's charge.

Scientists have found that the Earth's charge is generally small and amounts to only 500,000 coulombs (as in 2 car batteries). Then where does that negative charge disappear, which is carried by lightning closer to the surface of the Earth?

Usually, in clear weather, the Earth is quietly discharged (constantly between the ionosphere and the earth's surface is a weak current through the entire atmosphere). Although air is considered an insulator, it has a small fraction of ions, which allows the current to exist in the volume of the entire atmosphere. Due to this, although slowly, but the negative charge is transferred from the earth's surface to the altitude. Therefore, the volume of the total charge of the Earth always remains unchanged.

Where does the ball lightning come from?

For today, the most common opinion is that the ball lightning is a special type of charge in the form of a ball, with an existing quite a long time and moving along an unpredictable trajectory.

There is no unified theory of the origin of this phenomenon for today. There are many hypotheses, but so far no one has received recognition among scientists.

Usually, eyewitnesses say, ball lightning occurs in a thunderstorm or in a storm. But there are cases of its occurrence and in sunny weather. More often it is generated by ordinary lightning, sometimes arises and descends from the clouds, and rarely appears unexpectedly in the air or even can come out of some object (pillar, tree).

Some interesting facts

Where does the thunder and lightning come from, we found out. Now a little about the curious facts relating to the above-described natural phenomena.

1. Annually, the Earth experiences about 25 million lightning flashes.

2. Lightning has an average length of about 2.5 km. There are discharges stretching in the atmosphere for 20 km.

3. There is a belief that lightning can not strike twice in one place. In reality, this is not the case. The results of the analysis (according to the geographical map) of the places of lightning strikes in the preceding several years show that lightning can strike several times in the same place.

So they found out what lightning is, where it comes from.

Thunderstorms are formed as a consequence of the most complex atmospheric phenomena of a planetary scale.

Every second on the planet Earth there are about 50 flashes of lightning.