Sprites, Jets, and Elves

[solrey]

keeha, I was thinking that it was written at about a kindergarten level as well. ROFL.

An even worser thought crossed my mind. Did that come from the "scientists"?

One key aspect that I was happy to see was the observations of these discharges occurring with typhoons. I'm looking for solid evidence of charge transfer between the ionosphere and cyclonic storms to support my ideas about tornado's being a discharge vortex within a storm between the ionosphere/mesosphere and, margin to margin, within crustal magnetic field anomalies. These discharges have been detected with supercell storms as well. Direct evidence for ionosphere and tornado charge exchange is about all that's missing at this point.

[solrey]

This article on physorg is written at something more than kindergarten level.

The abstract seems in order:

Gigantic jets are the clearest manifestation of direct electrical coupling between tropospheric thunderstorms and the ionosphere. They are leaders that emerge from electrical breakdown near the top of thunderstorms and extend all the way to the lower edge of the ionosphere near 90 km altitude. By contrast, blue jets and other related events terminate at much lower altitudes.
I think they're talking about the mesosphere...another DL in the atmosphere, perhaps? As in multiple stacked DL's.) Gigantic jets have been observed from the ground and from orbit. Some seem to be consistent with an upward-propagating negative discharge of 1,000 to 2,000 C km total charge moment change, but others have not been connected to distinguishable electromagnetic signatures. Here we report simultaneous low-light video images and low-frequency magnetic field measurements of a gigantic jet that demonstrate the presence and dynamics of a substantial electric charge transfer between the troposphere and the ionosphere. The signatures presented here confirm the negative polarity of gigantic jets and constrain the lightning processes associated with them. The observed total charge transfer from the thunderstorm to the ionosphere is 144 C for the assumed channel length of 75 km, which is comparable to the charge transfer in strong cloud-to-ground lightning strokes.

As it should be, considering that in the EU world, the discharge is ultimately from ground to cloud to ionosphere, and beyond.

[Tina]

Fundamentally, the author has little understanding of what he is informing about. What grade level is this? Kindergarden?

lightning... apparently find their way out the tops of thunderclouds, and then keep going and keep going and keep going until they run into something that stops them,"

Ok the level is very, very basic - but honestly its the only level I initially understand...then I can progress to deeper more scientific understanding.

Don't scorn the Articles for Dummies.

Another version as appeared in sciencedaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 184357.htm

[Tzunamii]

Fundamentally, the author has little understanding of what he is informing about. What grade level is this? Kindergarden?

lightning... apparently find their way out the tops of thunderclouds, and then keep going and keep going and keep going until they run into something that stops them,"

Ok the level is very, very basic - but honestly its the only level I initially understand...then I can progress to deeper more scientific understanding.

Don't scorn the Articles for Dummies.

Another version as appeared in sciencedaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 184357.htm

If the readers mind takes the next step and asks him/herself "self, what would a powerful Upward stoke of lightning run into that would stop it?", it could lead them into discovering for themselves the electrical relationships of the earth, its environment, and the implications thereof.
Cant feed steak to a *newborn.

*Note, I believe that Newborns have within them all of the answers to the most profound questions, only they loose them as we dumb them down, teaching them to communicate with us.

[StefanR]

January 29, 2010: High-energy bursts of gamma rays typically occur far out in space, perhaps near black holes or other high-energy cosmic phenomena. So imagine scientists' surprise in the mid-1990s when they found these powerful gamma ray flashes happening right here on Earth, in the skies overhead.
They're called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes, or TGFs, and very little is known about them. They seem to have a connection with lightning, but TGFs themselves are something entirely different.

To investigate, Rowland and his colleagues at GSFC, Siena College, Universities Space Research Association, and the Hawk Institute for Space Sciences are planning to launch a tiny, football-sized satellite called Firefly in 2010 or 2011. Because of its small size, Firefly will cost less than $1 million — about 100 times cheaper than what satellite missions normally cost. Part of the cost savings comes from launching Firefly under the National Science Foundation's CubeSat program, which launches small satellites as "stowaways" aboard rockets carrying larger satellites into space, rather than requiring dedicated rocket launches.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010 ... ?list14818

[seasmith]

TGF’s Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes


Electromagnetic Spectrum




http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/ems1.html#c1

“The electromagnetic spectrum covers a wide range of wavelengths and photon energies.

So the spherical multi-layered Earth receives massive, relatively medium wavelength, low energy radiation from the sun and then rebroadcasts across the spectrum: “whistlers”, lightning “flashes”, and on up to extremely high frequency gamma “rays”.

What’s going on at wave lengths shorter than gamma ?
Why can’t we detect the “photons” after that ? Have they gone linear, or around the bend to complete the EM/ES aetheric circuit ?

~

[RayTomes]

...
What’s going on at wave lengths shorter than gamma ?
Why can’t we detect the “photons” after that ? Have they gone linear, or around the bend to complete the EM/ES aetheric circuit ?

You have matter!

When you get to 10^20 Hz, that is the (Compton) frequency of an electron
At 10^23 Hz you have the (Compton) frequency of nucleons
Cosmic rays do have energies way beyond that.

[RayTomes]

(Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes)
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/%7Etohban/ ... icle_id=32

It seems that lightning and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes are closely related in timing and proximity.

Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) are very brief bursts of gamma radiation (typically around 1 millisecond long) coming upwards from the Earth's atmosphere from somewhere in the vicinity of a thunderstorm.
...

Hi Michael

This is wonderful stuff. First I heard of these.

I was aware that lightning was way more prevalent at certain places around the earth. These being the same, I think there is a way to look at it that makes some sense. First notices that the three places are fairly evenly spread, making a 4th harmonic of the Earth circumference (the 4th location is in the Pacific over sea and only shows up weakly).

The Schumann resonance frequency is ~7.6 Hz, and harmonics of this are generally observed especially up to about 6th order. The 4th harmonic is around 26 Hz I think

If you think about what happens when there is a big electrical discharge from a bolt of lightning, a circular wave goes out around the world and converges on the exact opposite point after about 66 ms. That energy then expands from that point and reconverges at the original location another 66 ms later. This sets of the next lightning bold zap. So lightning shows these clear zap-zap-zap effects at the Schumann resonance.

Now I liken this to the effects found in sonoluminescence or even in sonofusion (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion) where energy is concentrated to a point. Because the inverse square law is operating in reverse, you get this huge concentration of energy at a point. Zap!

I first discovered this effect for myself when studying standing waves in a cup of tea. When I jiggled the cup just right the waves converged with every increasing amplitude and sent a jet of hot tea into my eye! After that I used my computer sound speakers and cold water to study this stuff.

[junglelord]

Tesla knew more about the earth and lightnting then modern men and we are just starting to catch up, after 100 years of misdirection.

[seasmith]

Ray Tomes wrote:

seasmith wrote:
...
What’s going on at wave lengths shorter than gamma ?
Why can’t we detect the “photons” after that ? Have they gone linear, or around the bend to complete the EM/ES aetheric circuit ?

You have matter!

Exactly !

s

[solrey]

It's as simple as pinch instabilities along the discharge filament. Plasma pinches are well known for producing radiation across the entire EM spectrum, including gamma rays.

Pinch

Pinches are created in the laboratory in equipment related to nuclear fusion, such as the Z-pinch machine and high-energy physics, such as the dense plasma focus. Pinches may also become unstable, and generate radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, including radio waves, x-rays and gamma rays, and also neutrons and synchrotron radiation. Types of pinches, that may differ in geometry and operating forces, include the Cylindrical pinch, Inverse pinch, Orthogonal pinch effect, Reversed field pinch, Sheet pinch, Screw pinch (also called stabalized z-pinch, or θ-z pinch), Theta pinch (or thetatron), Toroidal pinch, Ware pinch and Z-pinch.

Neutron and high energy deuteron anisotropy investigations in plasma focus device

The anisotropies of neutron and high energy deuteron emissions from the NX2 plasma focus device [M. V. Roshan et al., Phys. Lett. A 373, 851 (2009)] are studied. The nuclear activation of graphite targets is used to measure the fluences of high energy deuterons in the axial and radial directions. Two bismuth germanate scintillation detectors connected to multichannel analyzer systems are used for the detection of 511 keV gamma rays resulting from positron annihilation in the two targets.

Neutron generation in lightning bolts

In our experiment, we have attempted to keep the cosmic-ray neutron background at a negligible level by searching for neutrons from individual lightning strokes, for a time-interval comparable with the duration of the lightning stroke. Here we present the first experimental evidence that neutrons are generated in lightning discharges, with 107−1010 neutrons per stroke. Whether these neutrons are thermonuclear in origin, or are generated by non-thermal processes, remains to be determined.

[mharratsc]

Hey, check this out- compare the locations of the TGF's with the diocotron instabilities (at least thats what I think they are) in the plasma filaments below:




and from the recent TPOD 'Plasma In Three Dimensions (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2010/ ... nsions.htm):




Does it seem as though there is a locational correlation to anyone else, or is it just me? o.O

If we can map those Uv 'hotspots' and they are associated with extremes in electrical discharging between Earth and atmosphere, and one would presume that there were some form of electrical storm associated with them as well- would that help with meteorological 'Early Warning' systems, do you think?

[junglelord]

Yeah, thats a match to my eyes.
Great thinking.

[bboyer]

I was aware that lightning was way more prevalent at certain places around the earth. These being the same, I think there is a way to look at it that makes some sense. First notices that the three places are fairly evenly spread, making a 4th harmonic of the Earth circumference (the 4th location is in the Pacific over sea and only shows up weakly).

The Schumann resonance frequency is ~7.6 Hz, and harmonics of this are generally observed especially up to about 6th order. The 4th harmonic is around 26 Hz I think

If you think about what happens when there is a big electrical discharge from a bolt of lightning, a circular wave goes out around the world and converges on the exact opposite point after about 66 ms. That energy then expands from that point and reconverges at the original location another 66 ms later. This sets of the next lightning bold zap. So lightning shows these clear zap-zap-zap effects at the Schumann resonance.

Now I liken this to the effects found in sonoluminescence or even in sonofusion (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion) where energy is concentrated to a point. Because the inverse square law is operating in reverse, you get this huge concentration of energy at a point. Zap!

I first discovered this effect for myself when studying standing waves in a cup of tea. When I jiggled the cup just right the waves converged with every increasing amplitude and sent a jet of hot tea into my eye! After that I used my computer sound speakers and cold water to study this stuff.

Hmm. Reminds me of this area:

http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/v ... 141#p24213

Which is here on Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?source=s_q& ... 726563&z=2

[mharratsc]

That's a fair-sized town built in the shade of that perpetual cloudbank there! I bet lightning arrestor manufacturing is a major portion of their local economy! o.O

I was checking out the geography of that area there, and- other than the fact that the ridgeline of the continent comes up along to the west of that bay/lake there and splits off just to the south and runs up the eastern side of that bay- there just isn't a whole lot going on there that would give any kind of indication as to *why* so much electrical current is passing through to the atmosphere at that point. You would think that the ground/surface would be really hot through there, unless the composition of the area there down to a great depth is very, very conductive...