Elmo's Fire, the stationary glow that is sometimes confused with ball lightning. This ionized air, or plasma, is the same condition that enables St. The Lanzhou researchers' paper supports the theory that ball lightning results from a ground strike that creates a reaction between oxygen and vaporized elements from the soil.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Along with his son, Paul, and storm chaser Carl Young-his longtime collaborators-National Geographic explorer and storm chaser Tim Samaras died in a tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma, on May 31, 2013. Using one of the world's fastest cameras, a National Geographic explorer attempts to capture the birth of a lightning bolt. The spectrometer detected silicon, iron, and calcium in the ball, all of which were also present in the local soil. The ball appeared just after a lightning strike and traveled horizontally for about 10 meters (33 feet). Researchers from Lanzhou, China's Northwest Normal University inadvertently recorded a ball lightning event while studying a 2012 thunderstorm using video cameras and spectrometers. That said, scientists seem to agree ball lightning is real, even if they don't yet fully understand what causes it.
That and other early accounts suggest that ball lightning can be deadly.Īt least one study has theorized that about half of all ball lightning sightings are hallucinations caused by the magnetic fields during storms. One of the first recorded sightings of ball lightning occurred in 1638, when a " great ball of fire" came through the window of an English church. The heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates thunder. A lightning flash can heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface. Lightning in general is an electrical discharge caused by positive and negative imbalances within clouds themselves, or between storm clouds and the ground. It's sometimes accompanied by a hissing sound and an acrid odor. The bizarre phenomenon, also known as globe lightning, usually appears during thunderstorms as a floating sphere that can range in color from blue to orange to yellow, disappearing within a few seconds. Wherever there is competition, you can expect that there will be an awful lot of lying going on,'' Lloyd said.Instances of ball lightning-glowing, electric orbs in the sky-have captivated and mystified us for centuries. There isn`t any reason for one organism to tell another the truth.
''When you think about it, the deception makes perfectly good sense. When the male swoops down to get acquainted, the female devours him.
#Lightning flies code
These tricky females answer the flash of a male of a different species by mimicking the female flash code for that species. ''Life is hell for everybody, and you normally think of a firefly as having a gay, happy life, but it`s murder.''Įven the mating ritual does not always have a happy ending, Lloyd said, because in the genus Photuris, the female tells lies. ''They could get wiped out by a raindrop,'' he said.
#Lightning flies cracked
''Everybody steps on them, they get eaten by spiders, millions die on the windshields of cars every night,'' said Lloyd, who cracked the communication code of lightning bugs.
With luck, a hearty adult firefly could live from spring until fall. Throughout the summer, females lay eggs that will hatch in the spring. It`s the length of the flash and the timing between flashes that counts in communication, Lloyd said.
0 kommentar(er)
