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A new scientific paper suggests that lightning on Earth
may be vastly more powerful than conventional science has ever suggested.
Investigators sought to answer how much energy is in a terrestrial bolt of lightning,
through the study of fulgurites which are hollow glass tubes
that form on lightning striked soil; silica, sand or rock.
To their surprise they found that the lightning that formed some of the fulgurites
had far more energy than is expected of earthly lightning.
In his web article "There's way more energy in a bolt of lightning than we thought",
Matthew Pasek, associate professor of geosciences at the University of South Florida,
states of the findings: "When we looked at these fulgurites in depth,
something odd came out of the data.
Our energy measurements followed something called a 'lognormal' trend.
Rather than following the bell curve we often see in the distribution of natural phenomena,
the large lightning strikes were much larger than the average,
while the smaller strikes were not so much smaller than the average.
Strikes that were twice the average were as frequent as those that were half the average."
Pasek continues: "Based on our calculations, how close does Hollywood come,
with estimates like in Back to the Future of 1.21 gigawatts of power in lightning?
Power is energy per time, and our measurements of fulgurites suggest
that megajoules of energy make rock in thousandths to millionths of seconds.
So a gigawatt is actually on the low side --
lightning power may be a thousand times that,
reaching into the terawatts, though the average is probably tens of gigawatts."
The research was conducted in Florida
which receives more lightning than any other state in the U.S.
However, any lightning occurring on Earth today may be only trivial in comparison to past
extraordinary electrical events that are no longer occurring in our solar system today.
The position of the chief principals of The Thunderbolts Project is that,
in the relatively recent past, perhaps only several thousand years ago,
in a period of chaos in the inner solar system,
violent electrical discharges between planetary bodies
dramatically altered the surfaces of several planets and moons, including the Earth.
As repeatedly outlined on this series, experiments with electrical discharges
have successfully reproduced countless familiar geological features.
Intriguingly, this latest research is not the first recent finding to suggest
that lightnings' power is far greater than consensus science has ever suspected.
The 2014 National Geographic article: "Lightning Can Shape a Mountain!"
outlines the research of geomorphologists into the effects of lightning
on the Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa.
The research found that "lightning, rather than ice or heat
is the main force shattering rocks on Drakensberg summits.
The lightning is said to have destroyed basalt rock face
and scattered as much as 10 tons of debris, dozens of feet.
The electrical discharges have formed pits up to three feet deep
and have reportedly moved boulders the size of a small truck.
Evidence for shockingly powerful lightning has been found on other planets as well.
Earlier this year scientists expressed their amazement over the completely
unexpected discovery of the mineral tridymite in a Martian crater.
Tridymite only forms at superhot temperatures
and is normally associated with the volcanic activity.
But Mars is not known to have the dynamics of subsurface plates
that are thought necessary to create volcanic activity.
NASA planetary scientist Richard Morris said of the discovery:
"It was the last mineral we expected to see.
If this stands the test of time it has a lot of implications for how Mars evolved.
We may have to rethink a few things."
The discovery is so problematic that investigators said
that they're now trying to discover ways
that Tridymite can form at much less than superhot temperatures.
But could the Martian mineral have been formed
by extremely powerful electrical discharges?
As noted in a previous Space News, Tridymite has been reported
as a product of lightning on a roofing slate, in the book: "The Data of Geochemistry".
If the electrical catastrophes that we have proposed did in fact occur,
then high-energy electrical discharges would have removed enormous materials
from Mars and other planets and moons producing many, if not all,
of the observed comets, asteroids and meteoroids in our solar system.
In fact, many recent scientific discoveries provide clues to these past events
though institutionalized science has yet to connect the pieces of the puzzle.
For decades, scientists have puzzled over the origins of glassy beads
found in stony meteorites, called chondrules.
The theory of meteorite origins in a primordial dust cloud
do not allow for the extreme heating and sudden cooling
required for the chondrules formation.
However, in his 1988 scientific paper:
"Formation of Chondritic Meteorites and the Solar System",
physicist Wal Thornhill proposed that intense electrical discharges
were the process that formed the chondrules.
Today, the scientific mainstream has taken steps toward the same conclusion.
In 2013, a scientific study suggested that the chondrules
were created by lightning within a theoretical protoplanetary disk.
A Space.com report on the study stated:
"Rocks melted in the early solar system after electrical currents
spiked through the cloud of dust circling around the young sun."
Some have suggested a similar process for comets
after the astonishing discovery of complex crystalline structures
in dust particles from the comet Wild2 in NASA's 2004 Stardust mission.
The mission's principal investigator Donald Brownlee said of the discovery:
"In the coldest part of the solar system,
we've found samples that formed at extremely hot temperatures.
When these minerals formed they were either red-hot or white-hot grains.
And yet they were collected in a comet; the Siberia of the solar system."
A few have suggested that a "transient heating event"
such as shocks or indeed lightning in the outer regions of the protoplanetary disk
may have created the anomalous minerals in the Wild-2 dust samples.
As explained in several previous Space News episodes,
many recent discoveries emphasize how little scientists today
really understand about lightning.
The study of lightning illuminates the electrical connectedness between the Earth and the Sun
and it may also provide a window to past events that forever changed our world,
and remain a puzzle yet to be resolved.
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