Scientists have taken a look at what causes a strange electrical phenomenon called blue lightning. The instruments on the International Space Station did what was impossible for scientists on Earth. According to the Science News breakdown, blue planes – which shoot from lightning clouds into the stratosphere, rather than down – have been observed by scientists and pilots for years, but without a top view of lightning clouds. , finding the cause or source was difficult. Because most pilots will tell you that flying through an active cloud of thunder is not ideal unless absolutely necessary, which limits your observation options.
The blue jet takes its name from its color and takes its color from what burns in the atmosphere. Traditional lightning interacts with a wide variety of gases on the way to the ground, but the upward motion of the blue jets means that the electric screw burns mostly nitrogen, which burns blue at that temperature.
According to Science News, blue planes can reach altitudes of about 50 kilometers in less than a second.
Scientists have finally got a clear vision of the spark that triggers a type of exotic lightning called blue jet.
The Space Station last week saw a blue jet coming out of an extremely short and bright explosion of electricity that happened near the top of a cloud of thunder. Scientists reported the discovery on January 20.
While blue planes and other meteorological events in the upper atmosphere are unlikely to cause serious harm to humans or animals, scientists monitor and study them not only for academic understanding of the natural world, but also for more practical reasons; such events can influence the way radio waves travel, impacting satellites and other communications technologies.
Scientists are trying to figure out what could be special about the sparks generated by the blue jets. The explosion reported in January – and recorded in February 2019 – was a flash of 10 microseconds of bright blue light, which occurred near the top of the cloud, about 10 miles up.
Torsten Neubert, an atmospheric physicist at the Technical University of Denmark in Kongens Lyngby, quoted in the Science News article, suspects that the spark could have been a unique type of short-range electric shock inside the cloud. This would explain the short and intense explosion, because although traditional lightning is caused by discharges between oppositely charged objects several kilometers away, these short-term sparks could bring oppositely charged areas within about a kilometer, creating powerful explosions of lightning. current that would go up fast. Evidence of such explosions is nothing new, but this could provide a new perspective on the phenomenon.