What is the most powerful lightning? (2024)

What is the most powerful lightning?

These rare "superbolts," which are 1000 times stronger than the average strike, also seem to hit far more frequently over ocean than land. To find out where and when this super-lightning occurs, researchers used a network of roughly 100 lightning detecting stations on six continents.

The scientists showed that the VLF waves transmitted to space by superbolts are much more powerful than is what transmitted by typical lightning.

(WMC) -Positive lightning is the most dangerous of the two types. It is more dangerous and can be deadly if struck because it comes from the top of a thunderstorm. The cloud tops at the top are positively charged, and can strike as far as 25 miles away from the main thunderstorm where the ground is negatively charged.

Lightning is an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves. Most lightning occurs within the clouds. "Sheet lightning" describes a distant bolt that lights up an entire cloud base. Other visible bolts may appear as bead, ribbon, or rocket lightning.

It's an atmospheric electrical phenomenon that discharges 1,000 times more energy than the typical lightning bolt. This supercharged version of lightning, called “superbolts,” are relatively poorly understood by scientists, at present.

The official definition of a megaflash is any horizontal lightning bolt which travels more than 62 miles (100 kilometers.) The new record flash went far beyond the definition.

Lightning is much hotter than lava. Lightning is 70,000 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to Lava at 2,240 degrees.

Lightning travels at 5920 km per second. That is faster than a bullet fired from an assault rifle- 1000 metres per second.

Dark lightning is the most energetic radiation produced naturally on Earth, but was unknown before 1991. While scientists now know that dark lightning naturally occurs in thunderstorms, they do not know how frequently these flashes take place or whether visible lightning always accompanies them.

ball lightning, also called globe lightning, a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning.

What is the rarest lightning color?

Perhaps the strangest colors reported are instances of pink or green lightning seen during snowstorms. The phenomenon, known as”thundersnow”, is rare. The unique sky color is caused as snowflakes refract and reflect the white bolt in a unique way.

Spider lightning refers to long, horizontally traveling flashes often seen on the underside of stratiform clouds. Spider lightning is often linked to +CG flashes.

In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun). When lightning strikes a tree, the heat vaporizes any water in its path possibly causing the tree to explode or a strip of bark to be blown off.

The distinctive blue-white color of lightning is caused by light emitted as the electrons drop back to their original energy states. Seen from above, lightning storms also produce less well-known emissions of blue or red light above the clouds, known as jets and sprites.

Lightning symbolizes several different things in the Bible. It can signify God's mighty presence – in a literal and / or poetic sense – that causes all people to tremble in reverence (Exodus 19:16-19; Psalm 77:18). It also means God's wrathful judgment against His enemies (Psalm 144:6; Psalm 18:14).

Lightning comes in every color of the rainbow (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Violet, to name a few). It's almost always white, but often it's tinged with another color around the edges. The three most common colors, aside from white, are blue, yellow, and violet.

These powerful strikes can heat the air surrounding them to temperatures nearly five times hotter than the surface of the sun (30,000°C). Superbolts, which are rare, can be nearly 100 times more powerful and around 1,000 times brighter than a typical lightning bolt.

Lightning strikes create plasma via a very strong jolt of electricity. Most of the Sun, and other stars, is in a plasma state. Certain regions of Earth's atmosphere contain some plasma created primarily by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Collectively, these regions are called the ionosphere.

Obviously there are a few problems with using lightning as a weapon. The CIA could only use it during lightning storms, and the lightning-attracting wire would have to stay close enough to the target to be lethal. Everything would need to line up just right for the assassination to take place.

Which is hotter lightning or sun?

A return stroke of lightning, that is, a bolt shooting up from the ground to a cloud (after a stream of electricity came downward from a cloud) can peak at 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (F). The surface of the sun is around 11,000 degrees F.

A bolt of lightning is 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. One thing hotter is when gold atoms are smashed together by the Large Hadron Collider, but only for a split second. Another thing hotter is a supernova.

A supernova is the hottest thing in the universe. The temperatures at the core during an explosion skyrocket up to 6000X the temperature of the sun's core.

So, according to de Rham, the only thing capable of traveling faster than the speed of light is, somewhat paradoxically, light itself, though only when not in the vacuum of space. Of note, regardless of the medium, light will never exceed its maximum speed of 186,282 miles per second.

Lightning heats the air and causes shock waves. These in turn cause sonic booms—but you probably know them better as thunder! Lightning and thunder happen at the same time. But you see lightning before you hear thunder because light, which travels a million times faster than sound, arrives almost instantly.

Keep in mind these shock waves are produced when the intense heat of lightning superheats air, causing it to expand faster than the speed of sound. Thunder is essentially a sonic 'boom'.

Lightning can appear to be many different colors depending on what the light travels through to get to your eyes. In snowstorms, where it is somewhat rare, pink and green are often described as colors of lightning.

When lightning strikes, different particles will scatter this light and cause the strike to appear as blue, pink, purple, white or even a brown-ish tint. You'll sometimes see more pinks or greens during snowstorms, as snowflakes tend to bend the light more.

How rare is rainbow lightning? There's a reason why it went viral: Those types of sightings are incredibly rare. Although 100 lighting bolts strike the Earth every second, the chances of them flashing near a rainbow are slim, said Randall Cerveny, a professor of meteorology at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Like regular lightning, red lightning is caused by a build-up of electrical charge in clouds, but in this case the excess charge is released to the ionosphere — around 50 miles (81 kilometers) up — rather than to the ground. Sprites are usually red in colour, and can range in shape between a jellyfish and a carrot.

How hot is purple lightning?

Up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe even more.

Sprites, also known as red lightning, are electrical discharges that appear as bursts of red light above clouds during thunderstorms.

Electrical arcing, whether caused by lightning, ice or wind damage, is very intense, can be as bright as lightning, can illuminate the entire sky and can change color from blue, green, turquoise, red and orange. When lightning strikes an energized power line, an electrical flashover arc can result.

For someone trapped inside a tornado, they should be able to see a circular opening at the top that is about 50 to 100 feet wide, and around half a mile in height. The "funnel" is so because of rotating cloud walls. Also visible are frequent lightning bursts, and smaller tornadoes that build up before separating.

While most Force Lightning manifested itself as blue(Darth Vader (before duel on Mustafar and obtaining armor), Darth Tyranus), it could appear in several hues. For example, Palpatine, Darth Bane and Darth Nox had all used purple lightning. The Hidden One used white.

However, the weather phenomenon referred to as "dark lightning" occurs much less frequently. According to NASA, dark lighting is a mostly invisible burst of energy inside of thunderstorms that fills the sky with gamma rays. It is widely considered the most energetic radiation produced naturally on Earth.

A bolt of lightning is 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. One thing hotter is when gold atoms are smashed together by the Large Hadron Collider, but only for a split second. Another thing hotter is a supernova.

Most commonly, humans are "hit" by dark lightning when flying through thunderstorms. At 39,370 feet (12,000 meters), the radiation dose is equivalent to that of 10 chest X-rays. However, at 16,076 feet (4,900 meters)—the middle of storms—the dose is 10x stronger and equivalent to a full-body CT scan.