🧵 Lightning question
Tk !IWmAMArV1w at Wed, 22 May 2024 19:05:53 UTC No. 16188321
While i was studying a thunderstorm started near my house. I took a video and stopped each frame where a lightning struck.
I noticed that only the tip of a lightning advances forward, while the part before it remains still until the lightning disappears.
I have two questions:
Why does the base remain completely still?
Why some lightnings hit the ground while others just cross clouds?
Gonna post a response to this thread with the second frame of the vid.
ps i'm trying a tripcode to see how it works
Anonymous at Wed, 22 May 2024 19:20:02 UTC No. 16188348
>>16188321
>Why does the base remain completely still?
Lighting isn't a physical object that's travelling trough the air, it's an energy current. The "base" isn't still, it's active but it's settled in the lowest energy state so it moves very little from the perspective of someone looking at it from the ground.
>Why some lightnings hit the ground while others just cross clouds?
It goes between areas with different charge, sometimes that's between a cloud and the ground other times that's between 2 clouds.
Anonymous at Wed, 22 May 2024 19:34:46 UTC No. 16188368
>>16188321
The glow is just light emitted from electronic de-excitation of the ionized air, it should't really move that much. The head is the tip of a streamer discharge, essentially an electron cloud pushed forward by space charge effects and creates an ionization front from the local electric field enhancement.
Here's a decent review article
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/