Althouse: "Thunderstorms contain 'dark lightning,' invisible pulses of powerful radiation."

April 10, 2013

"Thunderstorms contain 'dark lightning,' invisible pulses of powerful radiation."

News flash.

35 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Dark lightning is what gets hurled by Negro Zeus.; 4/10/13, 12:19 PM
Nonapod said...: I think one of the Superfriends was called Dark Lightning.; 4/10/13, 12:21 PM
Anonymous said...: Very interesting! I love the science posts, in fact I'm tingling all over....or was it dark lightening? There was a strange glow in my bedroom last night during one of the many storms.

Spring and summer in Wisconsin is amazing, California weather must be so boring.; 4/10/13, 12:22 PM
Nomennovum said...: A shocking development in meteorology. There is sure to be a lot of static from the flat-earth crowd. I'd like to short-circuit that silly talk and bolt this topic to global warming: Dark lightning doubters are like Nazis.; 4/10/13, 12:28 PM
chickelit said...: Spring and summer in Wisconsin is amazing, California weather must be so boring.

SoCal weather is like perpetual spring and summer.

Wisconsin winter and summer is exciting in the same way ideological extremes are on Althouse. No thanks. I do occasionally miss snow though.; 4/10/13, 12:45 PM
Nomennovum said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/10/13, 12:51 PM
Nomennovum said...: I do occasionally miss snow though.

You should lie down until the feeling passes.

Spring east of the Rockies and north of the Mason-Dixon line is a cruel sham. It's awful as a whole. Fall is a bit better. Too bad it only lasts a week.; 4/10/13, 12:53 PM
Tibore said...: Makes sense in hindsight, but I admit, it's something I never would've thought about before.

What blows my mind is that they're getting gamma radiation from it. I'm amazed. Apparently that's been known by scientists since '94.

And what boggles me further is that NASA's detected positrons - yes, antimatter - being produced by thunderstorms lightning bursts. I'm continually fascinated by just how powerful nature is. Things like that are a pretty forceful reminder.; 4/10/13, 12:55 PM
chickelit said...: And what boggles me further is that NASA's detected positrons - yes, antimatter - being produced by thunderstorms lightning bursts.

Yes, negation is always present & presently held in check.; 4/10/13, 1:00 PM
Anonymous said...: It's too bad Inga the lying, murderous Obama whore, Freeman Cunt, Garbage Pail, O Retard, and the rest of the white straight christian male haters weren't all hit by a thousand bolts of lighting at once.

Ah, well. Fantasies

Enjoy the decline, comrades!; 4/10/13, 1:01 PM
Icepick said...: You know what else is exciting?

Car wrecks.
Being eaten by a serial killer.
Chopping off one of one's own appendages.

Keep your exciting Wisconsin weather. If I could afford it I'd move to Pasadena RIGHT NOW.; 4/10/13, 1:10 PM
Icepick said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/10/13, 1:10 PM
Ipso Fatso said...: Wonder if George Jones will come up with a song, Dark Lightining?; 4/10/13, 1:12 PM
Cedarford said...: Agree with Tibore. It makes sense, with the high voltage potentials that can arise.
But it is awesome!
And if not for regular lightning "defusing" the buildup in electrical energy, there would be a lot more X-ray and gamma bursts in supercell T-storms.

Fortunately, distance from the source and atmospheric shielding has meant people in the air and on the ground don't get any real "dose".
But a new comeback for people that complain about lightning ..."Would you like it in gamma rays instead?"; 4/10/13, 1:14 PM
Anonymous said...: Well I didn't say winter was exciting. I'm seriously considering snowbirding.; 4/10/13, 1:14 PM
Anonymous said...: @Inga, the lying, murderous Obama whore:

Well I didn't say winter was exciting. I'm seriously considering snowbirding.

[prays for plane crash. prays hard for hijacking. prays Inga gets misidentified for a terrorist.]

Enjoy the decline, freedom-haters!; 4/10/13, 1:17 PM
edutcher said...: Thunderstorms, proof of globull warming, are eeeeevilllle.; 4/10/13, 1:18 PM
Cedarford said...: Dark lightning doubters are like Nazis.

No, the Left/Green/Progressive Jewish media and fronts like to use the word "Deniers". Which of course is some ultimate NY Times narrative that equates skepticism of the looming Global Warming Catastrophies....with illegal "Holocaust Denial".

People that question the Truth of Oracles like Hanson and Al Gore are not only wrong, stupid and ignorant...but are malicious and deserve to be suppressed much like the Wiser Europeans and Canadians suppress Holocaust Denial.

(For me personally, I am of the opinion that both global warming and lots of dead people in WWII are facts. But the numbers are open to question.); 4/10/13, 1:31 PM
DADvocate said...: I'm tingling all over....or was it dark lightening

You have a severe case of Chris Matthews Syndrome.; 4/10/13, 1:39 PM
chickelit said...: El cambio en el clima se sabe que será extremo; 4/10/13, 1:43 PM
MadisonMan said...: I don't like the phrase dark lightning. Dark Light? That -- to me -- connotes that you can't see it because it's dark out (low intensity) rather than the reality that it's outside the bandwidths at which your visible receptors (that is, eyes) function.

Dark Light. Those two words shouldn't be close to each other. Maybe someone will become famous by renaming this interesting phenomenon.; 4/10/13, 1:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Dark emissions.; 4/10/13, 1:54 PM
Anonymous said...: Not nocturnal emmisons.; 4/10/13, 1:55 PM
chickelit said...: Dark Light. Those two words shouldn't be close to each other. Maybe someone will become famous by renaming this interesting phenomenon.

That would be wicked good.; 4/10/13, 1:55 PM
traditionalguy said...: The cruising altitude of 35,000 feet seems to be above lightening storms, but at a lower level flights these bursts of dark radiation would be a serious danger.

An increased frequency of brain cancers among frequent fliers has been notable to me.; 4/10/13, 1:55 PM
madAsHell said...: Wow!!

Some professor at the Florida Institute of Technology has discovered sophomore level physics.

What will he discover next Gauss fields, and Maxwell equations??; 4/10/13, 2:02 PM
Sam L. said...: If you look out the left-side windows, you will see faint flashes of dark lightning, or light- darkning, or some kind of weirdness.; 4/10/13, 2:49 PM
MadisonMan said...: That would be wicked good.

Awfully big. Awfully good.

Another problem with Dark Lightning: it occurs during the day too, when it's light out!

@Tradguy: It doesn't take much for a thunderstorm to punch up to 60K feet. The AF jet that went down northeast of Brazil a couple years ago was in part due to growing thunderstorms (and also bad airplane design).; 4/10/13, 3:03 PM
SteveR said...: Isn't Dark Lightning a Stephen Stills song?; 4/10/13, 3:14 PM
Astro said...: ...lightning bolts are big honking sparks no different in kind from the little ones generated by walking in socks across a carpeted room.

No. Those little sparks are generated by walking across a carpeted room in (nail-less) leather or plastic soled shoes.

My BS detector goes into peak scan mode when I see obvious errors like this. I saw too much sensationalism in this article, not enough fact.
Is Joseph Dwyer of FIT a PhD? If so, where's his title? What department is he in? Where are the references to the papers he has published? Who are these astronomers?

There is a national magnetic lab in Tallahassee jointly operated by UF and FSU. Why not interview a physicist specializing in electromagnetics to get his thoughts on the phenomenon, or someone from the Lightning Lab at UF?; 4/10/13, 3:55 PM
Roger J. said...: now that I am retired and don't have to get up and go to work in the AM, one of my great pleasures is to sit on the front porch during a thunderstorm. I love to the energy in nature as expressed by a good thunderboomer.; 4/10/13, 4:22 PM
rhhardin said...: You get enormous sparks in Kroger from the combination of floor wax and shopping cart wheels.

I discharge myself against the U-Scan screen to see if I can crash the computer.; 4/10/13, 4:25 PM
Rusty said...: traditionalguy said...
The cruising altitude of 35,000 feet seems to be above lightening storms, but at a lower level flights these bursts of dark radiation would be a serious danger.

An increased frequency of brain cancers among frequent fliers has been notable to me

They can go much higher.; 4/10/13, 5:14 PM
Rusty said...: chickelit said...
And what boggles me further is that NASA's detected positrons - yes, antimatter - being produced by thunderstorms lightning bursts.

that would tell me that there are billions if not trillions of electron volts being created.; 4/10/13, 5:17 PM
cubanbob said...: Hmmm can a lead lined plane be made to fly? Otherwise it's back to fast trains and ships. For the sake of the children.; 4/11/13, 12:23 AM