On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Terry Blanton wrote:
What is the Vret path on this sky battery?
It's mostly from thunderstorms: lightning and neg-charged rain.
Conventional theory of the "Earth Global Circuit" has thunderstorms as
electrostatic generators which on average deliver neg. charge downwards
and pos. charge upwards. Everywhere else on Earth the slight air
conductivity lets charges leak back down. I remember one calc that showed
the RC time constant being about a second, so local e-field should reflect
what worldwide thunderstorms are doing. E-field measurements with a
field-mill normally show a 24hr cycle from 100V/M to 300V/M. I've heard
that the peak occurs when African coastal thunderstorms turn on during the
local afternoon.
2011 overview paper
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijgp/2011/971302/
Here at the UW we have a realtime tracking program for worldwide lightning
pulses at 100KHz, with lots of remote antennas. 2D distribution comes
from sort of a "cat scan" type of algorithm.
http://webflash.ess.washington.edu/
Aha, they're now talking about a remote volcano detector: using the
lightning network to immediately sense ash cloud eruptions.
Lightning at know volcanoes realtime hourly
http://flash3.ess.washington.edu/USGS/Global/
Somehow the circuit must be closed. I assume the Vret goes to earth;
but, is the circuit completed by evaporation with a charge on each water
molecule? This would must impact world weather somehow!
I recall old papers about rainstorms: the colliding cloud droplets
normally bounce and do not meld together, but provide a weak e-field and
it overcomes the surface-energy issues, and forces droplet-melding. The
same can be seen in simple desktop experiments: clean water splashed on a
clean wet surface will roll as distinct beads of water, and not meld. But
hold a charged balloon a few feet away, and the rolling "water balls" all
meld into the wet surface and vanish.
So, new way to destroy civilization: short out the vertical e-field, which
keeps cloud droplets from becoming raindrops, shutting down global rain as
well as the thunderstorms creating the worldwide e-field? :) But volcano
ash clouds would probably re-start things again. That, and winter
"thunder snow" storms. Whew.
(((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA 206-762-3818 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
