Posted on 07/27/2025 1:47:17 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? You're not alone. Details of what causes lightning are still being researched, but it is known that inside some clouds, internal updrafts cause collisions between ice and snow that slowly separate charges between cloud tops and bottoms. The rapid electrical discharges that are lightning soon result. Lightning usually takes a jagged course, rapidly heating a thin column of air to about three times the surface temperature of the Sun. The resulting shock wave starts supersonically and decays into the loud sound known as thunder. On average, around the world, about 6,000 lightning bolts occur between clouds and the Earth every minute. Pictured in July 2019 in a two-image composite, lightning stems from communication antennas near the top of Volcán de Agua (Volcano of Water) in Guatemala.
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Nice. The Catatumbo River in Valenzuela is one of the most hit places by lightning. It too is magnificent.
Is lightning AC or DC? If it is DC then are the clouds plus, ( + ) and the Earth minus, ( - ) or the reverse? If it is AC then what is the Hertz? Is it high voltage or high current or both? Inquiring minds want to know. ;-)
Valenzuela vs Venezuela
Fernando Valenzuela was a great baseball pitcher.
One of the things I loved about Valenzuela was that he was a little more “chunky” than your average Major League Baseball player. Didn’t matter. They could not hit his fastball, so running all over was not necessary.
Bookmarking
i wonder if one would find any diamonds at the zero of that lightning strike...
Lightning is DC
“Lightning is DC”
Gee! No kidding? ;-)
A novice answers:
DC, earth has a ton of free electrons (-) to migrate to the + charge developed by the convection in the cloud.
Hertz is the term for the unit 1/sec. the number of events “per second”. It is independent of voltage (potential difference) or amps (current). See V=IR. It’s the speed of the flip-flopping of the sinusoidal electronic ‘waveform. Thus, the electrons in your homes electric wires aren’t really moving like water in a steam, but oscillating back & forth. Tesla beat Edison on the AC/DC selection debate. Niagara Falls had something to do with that development, there may be a movie about it. If memory serves.
That looks like a volcano of land to me.
Is the plane glowing in the upper right being sent into a time dimension or materializing from one?
Valenzuela? Wasn’t he a pretty good pitcher for the LA Dodgers? Who knew he was a weather researcher, too?!
Wow.
It Is not that simple, the top of the cloud is different from the bottom of the cloud. I think the strike starts at the cloud which goes down part way and then the strike come up from the ground to the first part. Also the strike can go up from the bottom to the top. Also the strike can go up beyond the cloud top. A person more into this could give a much better explanation.
You say, One of the things I loved about Valenzuela was that he was a little more “chunky” than your average Major League Baseball player. Didn’t matter. They could not hit his fastball, so running all over was not necessary.
They could not hit his screwball; his fastball was excellent but the screwball was his out pitch.
Y’all need to get a sense of humor. ;-)
Just for the record, at age 10 I, alone, built a Crystal Radio Set. At 13 I, alone, built an honest to goodness Heath radio. At seventeen, I alone, built a Heath TV. In the military I was slated to and did work on early analog computers in San Diego. The building I worked in was the computer. I have been in one or another of the electronics industry after I left the military. If you want to count the Crystal radio then that means that I have been in that industry for 71 years. ;-)
Can I get a LOL? ;-)
That is such a cool picture! Lots going on….
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