portmylife.blogg.se - Purple lightning meaning

Elmo's fire was observed and its optical spectrum recorded during a University of Alaska research flight over the Amazon in 1995 to study sprites. While the bright flashes of light shared similarities with St Elmo's fire, the glow experienced was from the impact of ash particles on the leading edges of the aircraft, similar to that seen by operators of sandblasting equipment. Among the phenomena experienced on British Airways Flight 9 on 24 June 1982 were glowing light flashes along the leading edges of the aircraft, including the wings and cockpit windscreen, which were seen by both passengers and crew.St Elmo's fire was seen during the 1955 Great Plains tornado outbreak in Kansas and Oklahoma.

En route to Nagasaki with the Fat Man atom bomb on August 9, 1945, the B-29 Bockscar experienced an uncanny luminous blue plasma forming around the spinning propellers, "as though we were riding the whirlwind through space on a chariot of blue fire.".

The sailors saw these as favorable omens. Anselm) being seen around the fleet's ships multiple times off the coast of South America.

Accounts of Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe refer to St.

According to George Sphrantzes, it disappeared just days before Constantinople fell, ending the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines attributed it to a sign that the Christian God would soon come and destroy the conquering Muslim army. It was reportedly seen emitting from the top of the Hippodrome. Elmo's fire is reported to have been seen during the Siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Hermes' fire, perhaps through linguistic confusion. Elmo's fire, known as "Saint Nicholas" or "Saint Peter's lights", also sometimes called St.

Russian sailors also historically documented instances of St.

Elmo's fire as canwyll yr ysbryd or canwyll yr ysbryd glân ("candles of the Holy Ghost" or the "candles of St. Elmo's fire was sometimes associated with the Greek element of fire, such as with one of Paracelsus's elementals, specifically the salamander, or, alternatively, with a similar creature referred to as an acthnici. Elmo's fire was called Helene ( Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη), literally meaning " torch", with two instances referred to as Castor and Polydeuces, names of the mythological twin brothers of Helen.

In ancient Greece, the appearance of a single instance of St.

Elmo's fire behaves differently in airborne objects versus grounded structures. In an August 2020 paper, MIT demonstrated that St. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin hypothesized that a pointed iron rod would light up at the tip during a lightning storm, similar in appearance to St. Elmo's fire to fluoresce with blue or violet light this is similar to the mechanism that causes neon lights to glow, albeit at a different colour due to the different gas involved. The nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere cause St.

Sharp points lower the necessary voltage because electric fields are more concentrated in areas of high curvature, so discharges preferentially occur and are more intense at the ends of pointed objects.

The magnitude of the electric field depends greatly on the geometry (shape and size) of the object. A local electric field of about 100 kV/m is required to begin a discharge in moist air. Elmo's fire are present during thunderstorms, when high-voltage differentials are present between clouds and the ground underneath. The electric field around the affected object causes ionization of the air molecules, producing a faint glow easily visible in low-light conditions. Elmo's fire is a reproducible and demonstrable form of plasma. The phenomenon, which can warn of an imminent lightning strike, was regarded by sailors with awe and sometimes considered to be a good omen. The intensity of the effect, a blue or violet glow around the object, often accompanied by a hissing or buzzing sound, is proportional to the strength of the electric field and therefore noticeable primarily during thunderstorms or volcanic eruptions. It has also been observed on the leading edges of airplanes, as in the case of British Airways Flight 009. Elmo's fire-also called Witchfire or Witch's Fire -is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn in an atmospheric electric field. Electrostatic discharge flashes across the windscreen of a KC-10 cockpit