From: Don Latham (djl@montana.com)
Date: Sun Jun 30 2002 - 09:07:03 PDT
Lightning has been observed on Jupiter and, I seem to remember, on Venus as
well. The peak frequency of the discharges, both in-cloud and
cloud-to-ground, is on the order of 5 kHz on earth, maybe lower on Jupiter;
I do not recall. The mechanism for charge separation and the initiation of
the breakdown is little understood. There are claims of lightning from
"warm", ie. non-glaciated clouds, but this is rare. On earth, there are
about 1800 discharges per second. For a good rundown, see the web page at
Marshall space flight center.
Don
Don Latham
Six Mile Systems
POBox 460134
17850 Six Mile Road
Huson, MT 59846
406-626-4304
djl@montana.com
"Never confuse Motion with Action"
B.Franklin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Boyd Fox" <foxd@indiana.edu>
To: <MarcusJohn@aol.com>
Cc: <argus@setileague.org>; <public@setileague.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2002 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: Argus: New Detection strategy
>
> Lightning is an electrostatic discharge so I would expect there to be
> processes other than thunderstorms that produce it.
>
> 73,
> Daniel Fox
> KF9ET
>
> On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 MarcusJohn@aol.com wrote:
>
> > A couple of days ago I heard a NASA official on the radio state that it
is
> > almost certain that there other worlds out in the universe that have
streams,
> > lakes, and mountains, etc. He, of course, did not go so far as to say
the
> > obvious, that it is unlikely that all of these lakes are completely
sterile.
> > It is likely that there is life there.
> >
> > Then I had a eureka moment. If there are lakes, there has to be rain. If
> > there is rain, there has to be thunderstorms. Therefore there must be
> > lightening.
> >
> > A lightening bolt releases and radiates a huge amound of energy. The
spectrum
> > is wideband, from DC to Daylight. It is very easy to receive this
> > electromagnetic signal with very small antennas and hardware. Our own
planet
> > radiates something like a million bolts a day.
> >
> > A brief internet search turned up some useful links. Here is one:
> > http://bub2.meteo.psu.edu/default.htm
> >
> > Can anyone theorize on the requirements to detect and characterize
extrasolar
> > lightening bolts? Anyone want to work on a project such as this? If we
could
> > find the watery (and stormy) planets, we might get a jump on the
analysis
> > looking for Earth sized planets.
> >
> > John Marcus MD
> >
>
>
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