A NASA astronaut has captured an electrifying image of Earth from space, featuring a gigantic, jellyfish-shaped "sprite" of red lightning shooting upwards above a thunderstorm in North America. The rare phenomenon is still poorly understood, despite being studied for more than 30 years.
Image credit: NASA/ISS/Nichole Ayers
@gnarf @Natasha_Jay I'm no physics major, but isn't it simply when the difference in electrical charges between the earth and sky/cloud exceeds the electrical resistance of the air? Or is there something extra I'm missing?
It's the same thing for a static shock -- if I scruff my feet on shag carpet and I touch something conductive and grounded, the spark and snap is the result of the surplus of electrons bridging the last few millimetres. The scale is just... way bigger.
@JustinDerrick @gnarf @Natasha_Jay
That's the easy part.
The difficult part: *why* do the differences in charge build up?
Yes, that also applies to static electricity in your shag carpet. The Tribo electric effect that causes it isn't fully understood either.
"While many aspects of the triboelectric effect are now understood and extensively documented, significant disagreements remain in the current literature about the underlying details."
@gdsherif
Might be, due to f.e. gamma increase. Yet to be sure you'd have to reference them against a star map.
Which is rather a moot exercise, as they might be just enhanced noise from the original photo and they're just background to the photo subject.
@gdsherif The sprite flares up at 0:15 in the video:
âIâM SIGNIFICANT!!â â Dust Speck
Yeah pretty amazing stuff.
Probably going to be a long time before we figure this out properly, it's not like it's down here on earth where you can attract strikes with conducting materials and analyze effects and so on, up there probably would not be a good idea to get close/struck either, and why is it red/other colors, lots of questions, not many answers.
Makes for fantastic images though.
I wonder if the color can be explained with this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmer_series
Every time I see a photo of one of these, I think of Spider Robinson's 1st novel, published in 1976. Telempath, in which, because of increasing air pollution, humans came into conflict previously unknown plasma creatures, which I think he based on sightings of sprites. In the novel, they were called "Muskies," if memory serves.
Edit: This is esp fun bc at the time (according to the novel, at least) even the âąexistenceâą of sprites hadn't yet been confirmed.
Yay, science!
How long before this image is shared by MTG saying: "See!!?!"
wow. that is extremely cool. thanks for sharing it.
@rolle @Natasha_Jay @RagingOwlbear
Yeah, this should get better, even when federated.makes this a little harder. I only see 19 Shares :D
@Natasha_Jay Seen that once from board of a tallship - there was clear sight an a thunderstorm at the horizon.
We had to get under deck some seconds later, for we had St. Elmos Fire on the masts.
Invisible Marcel đ
Natasha Jay
CaliCarol
SpaceLifeForm
Greg Bell
Justin Derrick
gnarf
Arthur van der Harg
joosteto
Urzl
chrisp
Imogen
Gamal Sherif
DĆșwiedziu
Calisti đłïžâđđŠ
Andrew J Spaulding
Aprettyture!
JulieR
Matt Smith
Jesse Spielman
some random kevin
Captain Hindsight
vbeyetteđšđŠ
Fat_Farang
Oregon Wine Woman
Mark
Molly Cantrell-Kraig đșđŠ
mattg
David "Dave" Treloar
Hugs4friends âŸđșđŠ đ”đžđ·
closertoyou
>LEAKLIV:/
srslypascal
ïżœ
9pfs
Lee đ
Pxl Phile
Cavyherd
Sinyi
Bilal Barakat đ
Humble Fan of Atty. Woo
Nath
Raging Owlbear đ Origins
ko kÄihe toku ingoa đ«
Roni Laukkarinen
Johnny Than
Klaus Frank
Bugspriet
Ăric Freyssinet
Nick Evetts FRAS 2E0LUN
Fubaroque