LONDON: Researchers from Southwest Research Institute generate artificial lightning and capture the image of sound waves
What is the most spectacular and enchanting moment during a Thunderstorm……..well definitely it is the lightning aspect as it takes maximum attention of the viewers. Sound waves travels much slower from higher altitudes and hence we tend to miss on the beauty of the rumbles that follows the lightning.
It is not only the sound but the energy which is accompanied in this thunder that has been also missed out for a long time.
Researchers from the Southwest Research Institute decided to understand what happens during a thunderstorm; hence they artificially triggered lightning and by capturing the images of the sound waves tried to study the thunder.
For the very first time ever in history an image of the boisterous bang radiating from a lightning was captured by the scientists and this image revealed an enormous energy involved in thunderstorm. Scientists had a basic understanding of the thunder’s origin however this study revealed a more ‘Physics aspect’ to the thunderstorm which they presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union held on May 5th.
Lets first try to understand “Lightning”: Basically when the electric charges move within a cloud or between the cloud and the Earth’s surface, this is lightning.
