Why is understanding lightning important?
Since the dawn of civilization, lightning has inspired and frightened humankind. The Egyptian god Seth, Zeus of Greece, Jupiter of Rome and Thor of Norway were said to carry thunderbolts on their person or in their chariots.
Church bells in Medieval Europe were rung to keep storms away. and in some cases gunpowder was stored in the basements of churches. In 1769, the steeple of one such
church, in Brescia Italy, was struck by lightning. The explosion that ensued killed as many people as the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Benjamin Franklin had developed the lightning rod by this time, but local clerics were loathe to install it on a holy structure.
It is fair to say that Franklin’s taming of the awe-inspiring lightning phenomenon launched modern electrical science, and contributed greatly to the acceptance of the value of rational inquiry into natural phenomena and what we today call the scientific method.
My own interest in lightning arose from the same awe felt by previous generations, coupled with my interest in the fascinating technology used in experimental lightning physics.
However, there are certainly practical reasons to study lightning. Lightning kills ~100 people/year and does $4-5 billion/yr in damage to structures and the electric infrastructure in the US. It sets off ammunition dumps, ignites mine gases, and starts forest fires. Lightning is an important atmospheric process and is one of the chief generators of nitrogen oxides, which are significant greenhouse gases.
Our understanding of lightning to date has led to better understanding of climate change, lightning-resistant electronics, structures, and aircraft. Lightning information has recently become a part of operational meteorology as well.
My work on lightning is focused on fundamental questions, such as, where exactly does the charge go in a lightning flash? Some things about charge and lightning are already known. In fact, Benjamin Franklin (correctly) guessed that most lightning lowers negative charges to ground from the atmosphere. We do not yet know how the flash transports charge in detail, however. What is the relationship between charge and channel length, propagation speed and radio emissions? What event starts a lightning flash? These questions were too difficult to answer until recently. New experimental tools developed by my colleagues around the world and here at Langmuir Laboratory have enabled us to attack longstanding problems in lightning research that were too complex in the past. In fact, GPS, satellite imagery, global communications and embedded microcomputers have lead to a revolution in the capabilities of geophysical researchers, and I am excited to participate in this.
May 17th, 2007 at 12:16 am
When you say the geophysicists are evolving in their field, do you mean that they are expanding the areas in which they apply their research? I would like to hear what has been done recently to determine exactly what causes lightning. My best guesstimate using a badly flawed intuitive process called ‘mind streaming’ (loose and very languid and lucid connections streaming together in a circle) no I am not crazy, at least not in person–is that lightning is caused “ionic friction”? Don’t look at me that away I am not a scientist! Anyway, as an anthropology and astronomy student I learned that it was lightning that was the catalyst for the first experiment done to replicate the creation of the primary building materials of cellular organisms.
Someone I know has been struck by lighting several times and has survived. He has had head surgeries for severe injuries and part of his skull is covered with a metal plate. Could that be the reason he has been struck so often and also complementarily, the same reason he has survived them?
Rita Leal
September 4th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
i was wondering, how do you recruit people for your station in the mountains?
September 9th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Here is a belated response to Ms. Leal (didn’t see your post). People who survive being struck by lightning do so for several reasons. Some of us lightning scientists speculate that those who survive were never actually struck by the full impact of a return stroke (10,000 Amps, 100 Million Volts). We kind of think those are the people who die. The people who survive may be hit by a “side flash” in which lightning strikes a nearby tree and a small branch (of the lightning) also strikes the person. Also,
the ground itself becomes electrified during a lightning flash — this by itself can knock you down, knock you out, injure or kill you. This is the kind of thing that we think happens to those who survive being “struck by lightning”. Having wet clothes helps — BTW!
September 9th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Greetings Eric — we have three permanent staff members at our lightning lab. One takes care of the buildings, another maintains and extends all our electronics and the third helps support our field work. Professional researchers are welcome to use our facility — and many do, most recently a group from France with the Teramobile laser tried to trigger lightning with their laser (didn’t work). We routinely have groups from Stanford out to look at Sprites (upward electrical discharges going up to the ionosphere). However MOST of the people who work at our lab (who do the actual science) are graduate students and undergraduate students at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. If you know anyone who is interested in a physics degree and in atmospheric electricity — please feel free to give them my e-mail.