Electrical fun in the sky - natural phenomenon

[TheAmmoniacal]

They showed one of these videos on TV today, saying something like "Nobody knows what's going on here, not even NASA!" (Mystery woohoo+++).

Found the video and a pretty good explanation here http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/10/25/amazing-video-of-a-bizarre-twisting-dancing-cloud/

In brief:

The answer lies in this: ice crystals, especially long needles, tend to become aligned with the ambient electric field.

So what you are seeing is sunlight reflecting off ice crystal faces that are constantly being oriented by the developing electric field just above the [cumulonimbus] top. Then there is a discharge in the cloud, and the field collapses momentarily, and the crystals begin to realign again. Then this just keeps happening over and over.

Just thought it was cool!

[Yansi]

Why does the embedded player say me that "This video has content from our partner Jukin Media. Playing on some websites is prohibited. Clck to play on the youtube website" - or some about, just a free translation from.

What the fuck does the youtube think?! 

[Falcon69]

Pretty cool.

But, I hate watching videos like this that make you stare at the screen waiting for something to happen.  I always think something is going to suddenly jump out of the screen and make me shat myself.

[TerraHertz]

That's splendid! I'm fascinated by natural electrostatic effects, and hunt stories of them, but I'd never heard of this one.

Few people recognize how significant electrostatics are, on a planetary and interplanetary scale. Or know how much more powerful the electrostatic force is than gravity.
For a proton - electron pair, the gravitational attraction is 4.40*10^-40 times weaker than the electrostatic attraction. Ten to the minus 40 power.... Or inversely, electrostatics are ten to the 40th power stronger than gravity.
Different ratios for proton to proton, and electron to electron, due to different mass/charge ratios. But all in the same ballpark of "a lot of zeros."

The traditional explanation for how storm clouds generate the potential differences for lightning breakdowns, is that water droplets acquire charge, then up and down drafts in clouds separate charged groups of droplets. In other words saying that 'wind currents provide the energy for lightning.'
But personally I wouldn't be surprised if the underlying cause is the space-to-ground standing potential difference (which originates from Solar Wind current effects), and that a lot of the charge movement and air movements in clouds is due to charges being pushed around by the main space to ground electrostatic gradient. So, the other way round. The space-ground electrostatic gradient provides most of the energy, with cloud short-range air currents partially a secondary effect. ie mostly caused by density/thermal gradients, but also significantly influenced by electrostatic forces.

In those videos you see a very direct illustration of the constantly varying atmospheric currents and resulting electric field variations. Really neat! Thanks for posting.

[Falcon69]

I'm curious,

If a plane were to fly through one of those storms, would it conduct like an electrostatic ball and create a nice light show? (not that natural it creates it's own light show).

Just curious as to the impact on the plane if it were to fly through.

[TerraHertz]

I'm curious,

If a plane were to fly through one of those storms, would it conduct like an electrostatic ball and create a nice light show? (not that natural it creates it's own light show).

Just curious as to the impact on the plane if it were to fly through.

The ice crystal refraction effect would probably only be visible at a distance and from the right angle to the Sun illumination. So passengers in the plane wouldn't see anything.
Also a plane is small compared to the scale of the fields involved, so although it would have local effects on the fields, they might not be noticeable by the distant observer. Probably the most visible result would be the plane's contrail ice crystals screwing up the shimmering effect in the plane's wake. Also disruption due to the trailing vortexes.

[Falcon69]

oh, so kinda like a rainbow then. It moves when you move, can never catch it.

So, this phenomenon is just light refraction from ice crystals forming in the clouds.