Lightning biography

Opening in full lightning - an eternal source of recharging the Earth’s electric field. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the help of atmospheric probes, the Earth’s electric field was measured. The carrier of the charges in the Earth’s atmosphere serve as ions, the concentration of which increases with height and reaches a maximum at an altitude of 50 km, where an electrical conductive layer - ionosphere was formed under the influence of cosmic radiation.

Therefore, the electric field of the Earth is a field of a spherical capacitor with an applied voltage of about square meters. Under the influence of this voltage from the upper layers to the lower, the current flows by force, the density of which is and this electric field would have disappeared if there were no lightning! Therefore, in good weather, the electric capacitor - the Earth - is discharged, and with a thunderstorm it is charged.

A person does not feel the electric field of the earth, since his body is a good conductor. Therefore, the charge of the Earth is on the surface of the human body, locally distorting the electric field. As a result, the positive charge of each hair on the head of a person standing under a thunderstorm increases by the same amount, and they, starting from each other, stand on end.

Electrization - removal of "charged" dust.

To understand how the cloud shares electric charges, we recall what electricalization is. It is easiest to charge the body, rubbing it about another. Investigation with friction is the oldest way to obtain electric charges. The word "electron" in the translation from Greek into Russian means amber, since amber has always been charged negatively during friction about wool or silk.

The value of the charge and its sign depend on the materials of the rubbing bodies. It is believed that the body, before it began to rub on another, electroneutrally. Indeed, if you leave the charged body in the air, then the opposites of dust and ions will begin to stick to it. Thus, on the surface of any body is a layer of "charged" dust that neutralizes the body of the body.

Therefore, electrification by friction is the process of partial removal of "charged" dust from both bodies. At the same time, the result will depend on how much better or worse the "charged" dust from the rubbing bodies is removed. Cloud - a factory for the production of electric charges. It is difficult to imagine that in the cloud there are a couple of materials listed in the table.

However, on the bodies there may be a different “charged” dust, even if they are made of the same material - enough for the microstructure of the surface to be different. For example, during friction of the smooth body, both will be electrified about rough. A thundercloud is a huge amount of pair, some of which was condensed in the form of the smallest drops or ice floes.

The top of the thundercloud can be at the height of the km, and hang the bottom above the ground at an altitude of 0, km. Above km, the clouds consist of ice floes of different sizes, since the temperature there is always below zero. These ice floes are in constant motion caused by the ascending flows of warm air from the heated surface of the earth. Small ice floes is easier than large ones, they are fond of ascending air flows.

Therefore, "nimble" small ice floes, moving into the upper part of the cloud, all the time collide with large ones. With each such collision, electrification occurs, in which large ice floes are charged negatively and small - positively. Over time, positively charged small ice floes find themselves in the upper part of the cloud, and negatively charged large ones are below. In other words, the top of the thunderstorm is positively charged, and the bottom is negative.

Everything is ready for the discharge of the zipper, in which air breakdown occurs and a negative charge from the lower part of the thundercloud flows to the ground. Lightning - hello from space and a source of X -ray radiation. However, the cloud itself is not able to electrify itself in such a way to cause a discharge between its lower part and earth. Therefore, for the emergence of lightning, something else is necessary except the electric field.

In the year, Russian scientist A. Gurevich from the Physical Institute. Lebedeva RAS Fian suggested that there may be a kind of ignition for lightning - cosmic rays - high -energy particles that are falling to the Earth from the space with near -light velocities. Thousands of such particles every second bombard every square meter of the earth's atmosphere. According to Gurevich’s theory, a particle of cosmic radiation, faced with an air molecule, ionizes it, as a result of which a huge number of electrons with high energy are formed.

Once in the electric field between the cloud and the ground, the electrons are accelerated to the near -light speeds, ionizing the path of their movement and, thus, causing an avalanche of electrons moving with them to the Earth. The ionized channel, created by this avalanche of electrons, is used by lightning for the discharge, see everyone who saw lightning, noticed that this is not a brightly glowing straight, connecting a cloud and earth, but a broken line.

Therefore, the process of forming a conducting channel for the discharge of lightning is called it "step leader."Each of these "steps" is a place where the electrons dispersed to the near -light speeds stopped due to collisions with air molecules and changed the direction of movement. The proof for such an interpretation of the stepped nature of the lightning - outbreaks of X -ray radiation, coinciding with the moments when the zipper, as it were, stumbling, changes its trajectory.

Recent studies have shown that lightning serves as a rather powerful source of x -ray radiation, the intensity of which can be up to electron -volts, which is approximately twice the one that is used in the chest X -ray. How to cause a lightning category? To study what will happen incomprehensible where and when is very difficult. Namely, for many years, scientists who explore the nature of lightning worked for many years.

It is believed that a thunderstorm in the sky is led by Ilya-Pre-Prok and we are not given to know his plans. However, scientists have long tried to replace Ilya-prophet, creating a conducting channel between the thundercloud and earth. Franklin, during a thunderstorm, launched an air snake ending, ending with wire and a bunch of metal keys. With this, he caused weak discharges flowing down the wire, and first proved that lightning is a negative electric discharge flowing from clouds to Earth.

Franklin's experiments were extremely dangerous, and one of those who tried to repeat them, Russian academician G. Richman, died in a year from a lightning strike. In the X years, researchers learned to call lightning, without endaning their lives. One of the ways to cause a zipper is to launch a small rocket directly into a thundercloud from the ground. Along the entire trajectory, the rocket ionizes the air and thus creates the conducting channel between the cloud and earth.

And if the negative charge of the bottom of the cloud is large enough, then along the created channel there is a lightning category, all the parameters of which are recorded by devices located next to the launch pad of the rocket. To create even the best conditions for the discharge of the zipper, the metal wire connecting it to the ground is connected to the rocket. Lightning: Giving life and the engine of evolution.

In the year, Biochemists S. Miller Stanley Miller and G. Yuri Harold Urey showed that some of the "bricks" of life - amino acids can be obtained by passing an electric discharge through water, in which the gases of the "primitive" atmosphere of the Earth of Methane, Ammonia and hydrogen are dissolved. After 50 years, other researchers repeated these experiments and got the same results.

Thus, the scientific theory of the emergence of life on Earth takes a fundamental role to strike lightning. When passing short current pulses through the bacteria, pores appear through their membrane shell, through which fragments of DNA of other bacteria can go inside, launching one of the mechanisms of evolution. Why are thunderstorms very rare in winter? Tyutchev, writing “I love a thunderstorm in early May, when the spring first thunder ...” knew that there was almost no thunderstorm in winter.

To form a thunderstorm cloud, rising streams of wet air are needed. The concentration of saturated vapors grows with an increase in temperature and is maximum in the summer. The difference in temperatures on which the rising air flows depend, the greater the higher the temperature at the surface of the earth, since at a height of several kilometers its temperature does not depend on the time of year.

This means that the intensity of rising streams is also maximum in the summer. Therefore, thunderstorms are most often in the summer, and in the north, where it is cold in summer, thunderstorms are quite rare. Why thunderstorms are more often over land than over the sea? In order for the cloud to be discharged, in the air under it there should be a sufficient number of ions.

Air, consisting only of nitrogen and oxygen molecules, does not contain ions, and it is very difficult to ionize even in an electric field. But if there are many foreign particles in the air, such as dust, then there are also many ions. Ions are formed when particles in the air in the same way that various materials are electrified during friction on each other. Obviously, dust in the air is much more over land than over the oceans.

Therefore, thunderstorms and thunder over land more often. It was also noted that first of all, lightning beats in places where the air -focus and emissions of oil refinery enterprises are especially large in the air. How Franklin rejected the zipper. Fortunately, the majority of lightning categories occur between the clouds and therefore do not pose threats. However, it is believed that more than a thousand people around the world kill lightning every year.

At least in the USA, where such statistics are being conducted, about a person suffer from a lightning strike every year and more than a hundred of them die. Scientists have long tried to protect people from this "punishment of God." For example, the inventor of the first electric capacitor of the Leiden Bank, Peter Van Mushenbruk, in an article on electricity written for the famous French encyclopedia, defended the traditional ways to prevent lightning - a bell ringing and shooting from cannons, which, as he believed, is quite effective.Benjamin Franklin, trying to protect the capital of the capital of the state of Merill, attached a thick iron rod to the building, which towered over a dome of several meters and was connected to the ground.

The scientist refused to patent his invention, wanting that it began to serve people as soon as possible. The news of the thunderbroke Franklin quickly spread throughout Europe, and he was chosen in all academies, including Russian. However, in some countries, the devout population met this invention with indignation. The very thought that a person can so easily and simply tame the main weapon of "God's anger" seemed to be blasphemous.

Therefore, in different places, people of pious considerations broke thundering. A curious incident occurred in the year in the small town of St. Simer in the north of France, where the townspeople demanded to demolish the iron mast of the thunderbone, and the case came to the trial.