Scientists create artificial lightning strikes to study the temperature inside real bolts of lightning. The heat causes the air around the bolt to expand violently, smashing through neighboring cooler air faster than the speed of sound. Fortunately, there is "light" in "lightning." For perspective, a household or automotive fuse is usually rated well below a hundred amperes, and By using their artificial lightning system, Li and his team were able to dial up lightning strikes at will, with currents between 5,000 to 50,000 amperes. ""A direct hit from a lightning strike can melt a power cable or start a forest fire, where the amount of heat from the lightning plays a major role," said Xiangchao Li, a scientist from China who specializes in lightning research. This resulted in artificial lightning strikes with temperatures as high as 17,000 F, twice as hot as the surface of the Sun. Air is a very poor conductor of electricity and gets extremely hot when lightning passes through it. Air is a very poor conductor of electricity and gets extremely hot when lightning passes through it. The surface of the sun is really hot! Yuen Yiu covers the Physics beat for Inside Science. Only about 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit — roughly five times hotter than the surface of the sun!
But for all the folklore and legends amassed over human history on lightning, we know surprisingly little about the inner workings of this powerful phenomenon, including something as simple as how the current that flows through a thunder-inducing flash is related to the temperature of the strike. "The next step would be to compare with measurements from rocket triggered lightning, or natural lightning, which can be done throughout the U.S. or China," Moore suggested.That's right, rocket-triggered lightning. (Inside Science) -- Lightning is one of the most destructive forces in nature. Not all those flashes hit the ground — some happen between or inside clouds. heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface The temperature of lightning bolt ranges from 15,000 to 60,000 °F – that’s hotter than the surface of the sun (on the order of 10,000 ºF).

"The basic physics of lightning, such as lightning initiation and lightning propagation, is not fully understood at this point," said Robert Moore, a lightning researcher from University of Florida in Gainesville. It is around 10,000° F. That is 100 times hotter than the earth’s surface. This resulted in artificial lightning strikes with temperatures as high as 17,000 F, twice as hot as the surface of the Sun.This creates a new problem -- at such high temperatures, a normal thermometer would explode. This discharge may produce a wide range of electromagnetic radiation, from very hot plasma created by the rapid movement of electrons to brilliant flashes of visible light in the form of black-body radiation. The blackout affected an estimated 60 million people in Brazil.Luckily such a device does exist.

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. How hot is a lightning bolt? This creates a new problem -- at such high temperatures, a normal thermometer would explode.
This result provides solid evidence for previous theoretical predictions that lacked the support of data. Lightning flashes more than 3 million times a day worldwide — that’s about 40 times a second. If an object is a good conductor of electricity, it won't heat up as much as a poor conductor. Known as an impulse current generator system, the device can create artificial lightning with currents up to tens of thousands of amperes.

So when anybody makes headway, it is major news. The term heat lightning is commonly used to describe lightning from a distant thunderstorm just too far away to see the actual cloud-to-ground flash or to hear the accompanying thunder.

Essentially a glorified version of Benjamin Franklin's wired kite, scientists today have ways to siphon natural lightning from the sky by launching an electrically grounded rocket, as shown in the video below.With a better understanding of the physics of lightning, scientists can help engineers to improve current protocols and infrastructures to better deal with lightning -- from weather warning systems to the design of power grids. Follow Yuen on Twitter: Inside Science is an editorially independent news service of the American Institute of Physics


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