The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia for Yakutia recalls that a thunderstorm is one of the most dangerous natural phenomena for humans. A lightning strike can cause paralysis, loss of consciousness, respiratory and cardiac arrest. In order not to suffer from a lightning strike, you need to know and follow some rules of behavior during a thunderstorm.
First of all, it must be remembered that lightning—it's an electric shock high voltage, great strength current, high power and very high temperature that occurs in nature. Electrical discharges that occur between cumulus clouds or between a cloud and the ground are accompanied by thunder, heavy rain, often hail and squally winds.
Employees of the republican department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations give a number of simple tips on what to do during a thunderstorm.
When you are in a country or garden house during a thunderstorm, you should:
—Close doors and windows, exclude drafts.
—Do not heat the stove, close the chimney, because the smoke coming out of the chimney has a high electrical conductivity and can attract an electrical discharge.
—Turn off the TV, radio, electrical appliances, turn off the antenna.
— Turn off the means of communication: laptop, mobile phone.
—You should not be near a window or in the attic, as well as near massive metal objects.
—Do not be in an open area near metal structures, power lines.
—Do not touch anything wet, iron, electrical.
— Remove all metal jewelry from yourself (chains, rings, earrings), put them in a leather or plastic bag.
—Don't open your umbrella.
—Never seek shelter under large trees.
—It is undesirable to be near a fire.
—Stay away from wire fences.
—Don't go out to take off clothes that are drying on the clotheslines, as they also conduct electricity.
—Do not ride a bicycle or motorcycle.
— It is very dangerous to speak during a thunderstorm. mobile phone, you need to turn it off.
So that lightning does not strike if you are in a car
The machine protects the people inside quite well, because even with a lightning strike, the discharge goes through the surface of the metal. If a thunderstorm caught you in the car, close the windows, turn off the radio, cellular telephone and a GPS navigator. Do not touch door handles or other metal parts.
To avoid being struck by lightning if you are on a motorcycle
A bicycle and a motorcycle, unlike a car, will not save you from a thunderstorm. It is necessary to dismount and move about 30 m away from the bicycle or motorcycle.
Help for the victim of a lightning strike
To provide first aid to a person struck by lightning, immediately move him to a safe place. Touching the victim is not dangerous, there is no charge left in his body. Even if it seems that defeat is fatal, it may turn out that in fact it is not.
If the victim is unconscious, lay him on his back and turn his head to the side so that the tongue does not sink into the airways. It is necessary to do artificial respiration and heart massage until the ambulance arrives.
If these actions helped, the person shows signs of life, before the arrival of doctors, give the victim two or three tablets of analgin and put a wet and folded tissue on his head. If there are burns, they must be poured with plenty of water, the burnt clothing should be removed, and then the affected area should be covered with a clean dressing. When transported to medical institution it is necessary to put the victim on a stretcher and constantly monitor his well-being.
For relatively mild lightning injuries, give the victim any painkiller (analgin, tempalgin, etc.) and a sedative medicine (valerian tincture, corvalol, etc.)
Lightning discharges - lightning - are considered as electrical discharges of a giant capacitor, one plate of which is a thundercloud charged from the lower side (most often, negative charges), and the other is the earth, on the surface of which positive charges are induced (lightning discharges also pass between oppositely charged parts of the clouds). These categories consist of two stages: initial (leader) and main. In the initial stage, lightning slowly develops from a thundercloud to the earth's surface in the form of a faintly luminous ionized channel, which is filled with negative charges flowing from the cloud (Fig. 4.9).
Rice. 4.9 Thundercloud
A typical oscillogram of a lightning current wave passing through a struck object (Fig. 4.10) shows that within a few microseconds the lightning current rises to the maximum (amplitude) value i. This section of the wave (see Fig. 4.10, points 1-2) is called the time of the wave front t. This is followed by a current decay. The time from the beginning (point 1) to the moment when the lightning current, falling, reaches a value equal to half of its amplitude (points 1-4), is called the half-decay period T1
Important characteristics of the lightning current are also the amplitude and rate of rise of the lightning current (wave steepness).
The amplitude and steepness of the lightning current depend on many factors (the charge of the cloud, the conductivity of the earth, the height of the affected object, etc.) and vary widely. In practice, the amplitude of the wave is determined by the probability curves of lightning currents (Fig. 4.11).
On these curves, the amplitude values of lightning currents Im are plotted along the ordinate axis, and the values of the probability of occurrence of these currents are plotted along the abscissa axis.
The probability is expressed as a percentage. The upper curve characterizes lightning currents with a probability of up to 2%, and the lower curves - up to 80%. From the curves in Fig. 4.11 it can be seen that the lightning currents in the flat areas (curve 1) are approximately twice as large as the lightning currents in mountainous areas(curve 2), where the soil resistivity is sufficiently high. Curve 2 also applies to lightning currents falling into line wires and into towering objects with an object-to-earth contact resistance of the order of hundreds of ohms.
Lightning currents up to 50 kA are most often observed. Lightning currents over 50 kA do not exceed 15% in flat areas and 2.5% in gambling areas. The average steepness of the lightning current is 5 kA/µs.
Regardless of geographic latitude, the polarity of the lightning discharge current can be both positive and negative, which is associated with the conditions for the formation and separation of charges in thunderclouds. However, in most cases, lightning currents have a negative polarity, i.e., a negative charge is transferred from the cloud to the ground, and only in rare cases are positive polarity currents recorded.
It is with lightning currents (negative and positive polarity) that the occurrence of overvoltages in electrical installations, including wired communication devices. There are two types of lightning current impact: a direct lightning strike (p.o.m.) in the communication line and indirect effects of lightning currents during a lightning discharge near the LS. As a result of both influences in the wires of the communication line, overvoltages from p. m. and induced overvoltage, united under the general name atmospheric overvoltage.
With a direct lightning strike, overvoltages of up to several million volts appear, which can cause destruction or damage to the equipment of the communication line (poles, traverses, insulators, cable inserts), as well as wired communication equipment included in the wires of the line. Frequency p. at. m. is directly dependent on the intensity of thunderstorm activity in this area, which is characterized by the total annual duration of thunderstorms, expressed in hours or thunderstorm days.
The intensity of lightning discharges is characterized by the magnitude of the lightning current. Observations carried out in many countries have established that the magnitude of the current in the channels of lightning discharges ranges from several hundred amperes to several hundred thousand amperes. The duration of lightning ranges from a few microseconds to a few milliseconds.
The discharge current has a pulsed character with a front part, called the wave front, and a back part, called the wave decay. The time of the wave front of the lightning current is denoted by x µs, the time of wave decay to 1/2 of the current amplitude is denoted by t.
The equivalent lightning frequency is the frequency of the sinusoidal current, which, acting in the cable sheath instead of a pulsed wave, causes a voltage between the core and the sheath with an amplitude equal to the amplitude for the natural lightning current. On average, m = 5 kHz.
The equivalent lightning current is the effective value of the sinusoidal current with the equivalent lightning frequency. The average value of the current during impacts to the ground is 30 kA.
The number and extent of damages that occur during the year on an underground communication cable depend on a number of reasons:
Intensity of lightning activity in the cable laying area;
Design, dimensions and material of external protective covers, electrical conductivity, mechanical strength of insulating coatings and belt insulation, as well as electrical strength of insulation between the cores;
Resistivity, chemical composition and the physical structure of the soil, its humidity and temperature;
The geological structure of the terrain and the area of the cable route;
The presence of high objects near the cable, such as masts, power transmission and communication poles, tall trees, forests, etc.
The degree of lightning resistance of a cable to lightning strikes is characterized by the quality factor of the cable q and is determined by the ratio of the maximum allowable shock voltage to the ohmic resistance of the metal cover of the cable over a length of 1 km:
Cable damage does not occur with every lightning strike. A dangerous lightning strike is such a strike in which the resulting voltage exceeds the breakdown voltage of the cable in amplitude at one or more points. With the same dangerous impact, several cable damages can occur.
When lightning strikes at some distance from the cable, an electric arc occurs towards the cable. The greater the amplitude of the current, the greater the distance from which an arc can occur. The width of the equivalent strip adjacent to the cable, impacts to which cause damage to the cable, is taken on average to be 30 m (with the cable in the middle). The area occupied by this strip forms the equivalent affected area, it is obtained by multiplying the width of the equivalent strip by the length of the cable.
Lightning strikes, lightning, are one of the highest energy phenomena on Earth, and, in fact, they are more than just a bright flash of light and a roar of thunder. Lightning discharges, as it has long been known, are the source of flashes of gamma rays, and recently a group of researchers from Japan found out that these gamma-ray flashes are, in turn, the initiator of photonuclear reactions in the atmosphere, as a result of which antimatter is produced, which immediately annihilates in contact with ordinary matter.
© Kyoto University/Teruaki Enoto
Gamma-ray flashes from lightning discharges were first recorded in 1992 by NASA's Compton Gamma-ray Observatory. Since then, these flashes, called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs), have been closely studied, and only recently, researchers from the University of Kyoto managed to find explanations for some of the features of the signals from these flashes.
“We have known for a long time that lightning discharges emit gamma rays. Based on this, a hypothesis was put forward that these gamma rays would provoke nuclear reactions in which the atoms of some elements of the earth's atmosphere take part. says Teruaki Enoto, lead researcher,“The west coast zone of Japan in winter is an ideal place to observe severe thunderstorms and lightning. In 2015, we began installing a network of miniature gamma sensors on the coast, and now the data collected by these sensors has allowed us to unravel some of the mysteries of lightning.
During a thunderstorm that raged on February 6 of this year, gamma sensors collected a very unusual set of data. Four sensors installed near the city of Kashiwazaki registered a strong gamma-ray burst immediately after a close lightning strike. But when scientists conducted a thorough analysis of the data, they found that in fact one burst consists of three consecutive bursts of different durations.
The first, shortest burst, lasting less than a millisecond, is the product of a lightning discharge. But the next two bursts are of greater interest to scientists, because they are the result of photonuclear reactions that occur when gamma rays from the first burst knock out neutrons from atmospheric nitrogen atoms. The knocked-out free neutrons are absorbed by other atoms, which leads to the appearance of a glow in the gamma range, which lasts for several tens of milliseconds.
The duration of the last, third gamma-ray burst, is already about one minute, and the reason for its appearance is even more exotic than the reason for the appearance of the second burst. Nitrogen atoms that have lost neutrons become unstable and decay, releasing positrons into space, which are a by-product of the fission reaction. Positrons are the opposite of electrons on the antimatter side, and when they collide with normal electrons, they annihilate, mutually destroying each other. And such a process of "suicide" of positrons-electrons is also accompanied by flashes of gamma rays.
In the near future, Japanese scientists plan to install a number of additional gamma sensors, which, together with the 10 already available, will allow them to collect more data and study the phenomena described above even more thoroughly.
“Many of the people believe that antimatter is something that exists only in science fiction” says Terueki Enoto,“But we argue that the process of the appearance and self-destruction of antimatter is the most common thing for the Earth. In some regions, such phenomena occur many times almost every day.”
Contributed by Kyoto University via Science Daily
The study was published in the journal
Lightning discharges (lightning) are the most common source of powerful electromagnetic interference of natural origin. According to approximate estimates, about a hundred lightning strikes the earth's surface every second. Surrounding objects, electrical structures, means of communication, RES, wildlife are adversely affected by lightning:
− electrostatic;
− electromagnetic;
− dynamic;
− thermal;
− biological.
Lightning strikes often lead to the death of people and cause great material damage.
Lightning is a kind of gas discharge with a very long spark. The total length of the lightning channel reaches several kilometers. The source of lightning is a thundercloud, which carries an accumulation of volumetric positive and negative charges. The formation of such space charges of different polarity in the cloud (cloud polarization) is associated with condensation due to the cooling of water vapor of ascending warm air flows on positive and negative moisture droplets in the cloud under the action of intense ascending air flows.
In nature, there are three main types of lightning discharges:
1. Linear lightning - has the form of a narrow strip between the cloud and the ground, between clouds or between individual accumulations of space charges within the cloud.
2. Ball lightning is a brightly luminous, mobile, convex, relatively stable plasma clot that appears and disappears for reasons that are currently little understood.
3. Silent discharges - a corona that occurs in places of sharp inhomogeneity of the electric field strength on protruding grounded objects in the pre-thunderstorm period and during a thunderstorm.
Linear lightning (hereinafter referred to as lightning) is the most common in nature and, in comparison with other types of lightning discharges, is the most common source of powerful electromagnetic interference.
Lightning discharge develops in different ways. Intra-cloud discharges most often occur during thunderstorms that occur high above the ground. Under such conditions, it is easier for lightning to develop from the bottom of a charged cloud to the top or vice versa than to go a long way from the base of the cloud, i.e. edge closest to the ground, to the ground. Intracloud discharges are often observed in arid regions, where clouds are higher above the earth's surface than in regions with a humid climate.
For middle latitudes, where clouds are located at a height of about 1–3 km, the number of intracloud discharges and discharges between clouds and the ground is almost the same.
The polarization of the cloud in the process of charge separation does not occur in the same way. In 75 ÷ 85% of all cases, the base of the cloud carries a negative charge, and during the discharge process, it is the charge of this polarity that is transferred to the earth. At the same time, the amplitude value of the lightning current with its negative polarity is on average 1.5 ÷ 2 times lower than with positive polarity.
The mechanism of formation of linear lightning is associated with the gradual accumulation of electric charges of different polarities on the upper and lower parts of the cloud and the formation of an electric field of increasing intensity around it. When the potential gradient at any point in the cloud reaches a critical value for air (at normal atmospheric pressure of about 3 10 6 V/m), lightning occurs at that point, which begins with a leader stage and ends with a reverse (main) discharge. The main stage of a lightning discharge is the source of PEMF. Due to the fact that several clusters of charges isolated from each other are formed in the cloud, lightning is usually multiple, i.e. consists of several single discharges developing along the same path. The average duration of the main discharge is 20 ÷ 50 µs; the number of repeated discharges can vary from 2 to 10 or more; time interval between repeated discharges 0.001 ÷ 0.5 s. As the measurements show, the lightning discharge current is a pulse with a rapid increase in current from zero to a maximum (wave front) and a relatively slow decline (wave tail).
When implementing protection measures and determining the electromagnetic environment (EMS) in a particular area, the following values of the main values of the lightning characteristic can be taken as calculated values.
It is thunderstorms that are an indicator of an increase in the activity of atmospheric space. For example, in the Altai Mountains and on the Salair Ridge (Maslyaninsky District of the Novosibirsk Region), very powerful thunderstorm activity is observed. This is manifested in new types of lightning discharges, which are not typical for an ordinary thunderstorm. In the general case, the type and characteristics of the thunderstorm process are determined by the vertical energy flow. In every thunderstorm, both the electricity of the depths of the Earth and the electricity of the heights participate. In a certain sense, each thunderstorm is a local aether disturbance. With an increase in the concentration of the so-called ether (which is the same as a change in the distribution of primary/dark matter), the order, nature of thunderstorms, types of lightning discharges and other characteristics multiply sharply. This is not due to an increase in the frequency and mass character of observations. This is indeed an absolute increase.
AT recent times(in the late 80s) a new term began to be used - a sprite discharge. It is characterized by the shortness of the discharge - fractions of milliseconds. A sprite discharge looks like flashes that start above the thunder front at an altitude of 25–30 kilometers and go up to a height of 140 km. A local colossal energy injection takes place in the thunder front. Discharges called sprites, jets, elves, angels, etc. are recorded from satellites and shuttle spacecraft today. These are all new types of lightning discharges that were not observed until the 80s of the 20th century. It should be noted that the lightning activity of the Earth has a strict daily order. This ordering is called the unitary electro-oscillation of the Earth, i.e., for example, when it is seven o'clock in the evening in London, thunderstorm activity increases all over the world both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This general electro-atmospheric oscillation of the Earth has one reason, which still needs to be clarified.
To characterize terrestrial phenomena, geophysicists often use the following expressions: band lightning, volumetric discharge, bead, curtain lightning, and, finally, ball lightning and dry thunderstorms.
Special mention should be made of the last two phenomena.
Ball lightning. This is a disgrace to modern fundamental physics, since there is no explanation for this phenomenon to date. Ball lightning has been known for millennia, but so far in 95 cases out of 100, the hypotheses describing them concern only one of their many properties. The remaining properties usually do not fit into the hypothesis. Now geophysicists are working on this issue. Ball lightning, in fact, is not even lightning, but an ethereal domain (dense clot of primary/dark matter), and the increase in the electrical saturation of our cities has led to the fact that today 53% of ball lightning is registered in large cities. They can be born from a telephone receiver, from an outlet, from a TV set. The city has become a supertranslator of ethereal formations, sharply changing the natural course of dark matter with its activity. It turned out that ball lightning is just one of the types of "luminous objects" or ether formations, the appearance of which is associated with the electromagnetic characteristics of space. Ball lightning, as it turns out, is completely subject to the laws of the ether, that is, they are described by the polarization equations of the physical vacuum (as, for example, in the model of V.L. Dyatlov). Some of the types of spherical luminous formations can reach up to 8 km in diameter. This is already hardly perceived as ball lightning, but it is also one of its types!
Dry thunderstorms. A new class of thunderstorms appeared and began to grow. I mean dry thunderstorms. If you remember the summer of 1998, then you can remember how thunderstorms began with a perfectly clear sky. Lightning discharges and precipitation turned out to be separated in time. Dry thunderstorms are characterized primarily by charge. If traditional "wet" thunderstorms had a linear discharge with a negative potential, then dry ones have a positive one. Their power is 6-8 times stronger. In addition, they are the main culprits of mass fires. Shower thunderstorms set fire to vegetation, and extinguish it themselves, dry thunderstorms do not. For the first time such thunderstorms were recorded in Northern Mexico, then in the Southern States of America. Today, the number of linear discharges of this type has reached 50%, while the number of fires has increased by 70%.
Due to what is such a stratification of moisture circulation, sound effects and directly the lightning discharge itself? Today, a situation is repeatedly observed when events occur sequentially: thunder rumbles on a completely clear skies, an hour later there is rain, wind and lightning, but completely silently. Geophysicists came up with a term: stratification of space according to the quality of ethereal excitation. The term was invented, but they are not yet able to explain it, they are only engaged in mapping thunderstorms. And today more and more researchers are firmly convinced that thunderstorms are indicators of a local regional type of ethereal excitation, that is, an ethereal characteristic of a given region of the planet. Moreover, this ethereal excitation (change in the distribution of dark matter in space) directly depends on the geological structure and the state of the geophysical fields of the given territory.
Since the mid-1980s, the Earth's thunderstorm activity has been seriously studied from satellites of medium-altitude orbits (about a thousand kilometers above the Earth's surface). Obtaining satellite data made it possible to refine the world map of thunderstorms, to identify the main centers of thunderstorm precipitation. It was found that not all thunderstorm centers are firmly tied to a certain territory, for example, the South Pacific or African centers. A number of significant thunderstorms, especially in the United States (and with them tornadoes), drift year after year across the continent. A positive, and for some territories (for example, Yakutia) a negative relationship between thunderstorms and years of active Sun was revealed. So, in recent years, the cosmo-etheric (ie, directly linked to the flow of primary/dark matter) nature of the origin and purpose of thunderstorms has been more and more clearly manifested in science. We emphasize that, to one degree or another, lightning discharges are recorded on all planets of the solar system.
on the photo - high-altitude sprite discharge
So, a thunderstorm is a natural process of vertical energy transfer of stresses in the atmosphere, ionosphere and in the earth's crust. But the anthropological activity of mankind, the construction of powerful artificial electrical energy systems, together with the violent emotional activity of millions of people, causes strong distortions in the electromagnetic field of the planet and is directly related to a change in the normal flows of primary/dark matters. Therefore, changes in the characteristics of lightning discharges are observed more and more frequently. Although, of course, a change in the characteristics of outer space also has a strong influence.
Each person throughout his life had the opportunity more than once to notice how the state of the environment and the person himself changes after a thunderstorm. It becomes easier to breathe, new forces appear, consciousness clears up. Wherein physical parameters atmospheres change in the direction of increasing electron saturation, humidity and ozone content. But if you create the same conditions artificially, then the fullness of the thunderstorm effect does not work. In the air, during a natural lightning discharge, some other component seems to be formed, which produces a strong tonic effect. The same feeling can be obtained in the electro-saturated centuries-old coniferous forests. This component, which makes breathing so easy, is called differently in different theories (prana, alive, kundalini, qi, etc.). But the main thing is that the natural process of its arrival on Earth is a lightning discharge - lightning.
One of the most important discoveries in thunderstorm research to date is that, according to research recent years, especially in the works of V. A. Gusev, the effects of the synthesis of organic substances in raindrops (up to 10 microns in diameter) under the influence of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation from lightning lightning discharges were revealed!
In recent decades, so-called "thunderstorm reactors" have been observed on Earth - thunderstorm formations, the number of discharges in which exceeds 300 discharges per minute. Significant thunderstorm air ionization, both during simple thunderstorms, and even more so in "thunderstorm reactors", contributes to the enhancement of the photosynthesis process. It should be noted that back in 1785, the botanist Gardini revealed a negative effect on plant growth of screening of natural electric fields. And increasingly diverse types of lightning discharges are also a source of nitrogen oxides, which fertilize the soil.
in the photo - red lightning sprites in the sky over Denmark
Taking into account the fact that 100 linear lightning discharges occur every second on the globe, the energy intensity of thunderstorms every second is 10 to the 18th degree erg/s, or 3.14∙10 to the 26th degree erg/year. We emphasize that the total annual energy productivity of thunderstorms is comparable to the energy intensity of annual seismicity - n∙10 to the power of 26 erg/year. The similarity with seismic processes can be continued in acoustic effects. Determined that maximum energy thunder is emitted at frequencies of 0.2-2 Hz in the infrasonic range, and in the sound section of the acoustic spectrum, the energy maximum falls at frequencies of 125-250 Hz, which is somewhat less than infrasonic. In seismoacoustics, infrasonic frequencies also enjoy a great advantage over the sound range.
