- Speakers
Paule CastroHostGlenn FarrHost
Paule CastroHostGlenn FarrHost
Yeah, right at the top there is something I discovered quite recently and notified Alan Stoller, our science correspondent here at KVMAR.
Well, it turns out, if you looked at the whole planet Earth from a satellite, you'd only be able to see about 180 degrees at the surface, right? Because you can't see all the way around.
And various probes in space indicate that there are an average of 50 flashes of lightning around the world every day.
25 on our side on average, 25 on the other side on average, even occasionally over places like Antarctica.
What that does, it sets off an electrical discharge in the atmosphere, which sets off electromagnetic radio transmission waves, if you like.
Now, do you remember, folks, in the good old days when you had AM radio, we talked about getting radio signals that bounce off the ionosphere? So about 50, 75, I don't know how many miles up in the air, there's an ionized or electromagnetically conductive layer wrapped like a piece of foil all the way around the Earth.
Well, these lightning strikes if you remember AM radio, it used to set off crackling noises.
That radio, quote, radio transmission from thunderstorms, flashes out into the atmosphere.
The radio waves it produces, of all sorts of different wavelengths, it's what's called splatter.
bounce off the ionosphere just like a radio transmission, because that's what they are.
It is partly dependent on the elevation of the ionosphere, so longer wavelengths go further, for example, and have a lower frequency.
It turns out the average frequency of all this is 7.25 hertz, seven times a second, which is about like Well, I can't even do it, but seven times, seven and a half times a second, there's a several series of standing waves in the atmosphere that can actually be measured.
And lightning strikes and the frequencies they go out mean it can be above and below that.
These lightning strikes can be observed on other planets in our solar system that have an atmosphere.
Yeah, right at the top there is something I discovered quite recently and notified Alan Stoller, our science correspondent here at KVMAR.
Well, it turns out, if you looked at the whole planet Earth from a satellite, you'd only be able to see about 180 degrees at the surface, right? Because you can't see all the way around.
And various probes in space indicate that there are an average of 50 flashes of lightning around the world every day.
25 on our side on average, 25 on the other side on average, even occasionally over places like Antarctica.
What that does, it sets off an electrical discharge in the atmosphere, which sets off electromagnetic radio transmission waves, if you like.
Now, do you remember, folks, in the good old days when you had AM radio, we talked about getting radio signals that bounce off the ionosphere? So about 50, 75, I don't know how many miles up in the air, there's an ionized or electromagnetically conductive layer wrapped like a piece of foil all the way around the Earth.
Well, these lightning strikes if you remember AM radio, it used to set off crackling noises.
That radio, quote, radio transmission from thunderstorms, flashes out into the atmosphere.
The radio waves it produces, of all sorts of different wavelengths, it's what's called splatter.
bounce off the ionosphere just like a radio transmission, because that's what they are.
It is partly dependent on the elevation of the ionosphere, so longer wavelengths go further, for example, and have a lower frequency.
It turns out the average frequency of all this is 7.25 hertz, seven times a second, which is about like Well, I can't even do it, but seven times, seven and a half times a second, there's a several series of standing waves in the atmosphere that can actually be measured.
And lightning strikes and the frequencies they go out mean it can be above and below that.
These lightning strikes can be observed on other planets in our solar system that have an atmosphere.
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