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Harvesting Lightning Energy
Since the late 1980s, there have been several attempts to investigate the possibility of harvesting lightning energy. A single bolt of lightning carries a relatively large amount of energy (approximately 5 gigajoules or about the energy stored in 38 gallons or 172 litres of gasoline). However, this energy is concentrated in a small location and is passed during an extremely short period of time (microseconds); therefore, extremely high electrical power is involved. 5 gigajoules over 10 microseconds is equal to 500 terawatts. Because lightning bolts vary in voltage and current, a more average calculation would be 10 gigawatts. It has been proposed that the energy contained in lightning be used to generate hydrogen from water, to harness the energy from rapid heating of water due to lightning, or to use a group of lightning arresters to harness a strike, either directly or by converting it to heat or mechanical energy, or to use inductors spaced far enough away so that a safe fracti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lightning
Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an average of one gigajoule of energy. This discharge may produce a wide range of electromagnetic radiation, from heat created by the rapid movement of electrons, to brilliant flashes of visible light in the form of black-body radiation. Lightning causes thunder, a sound from the shock wave which develops as gases in the vicinity of the discharge experience a sudden increase in pressure. Lightning occurs commonly during thunderstorms as well as other types of energetic weather systems, but volcanic lightning can also occur during volcanic eruptions. The three main kinds of lightning are distinguished by where they occur: either inside a single thundercloud (intra-cloud), between two clouds (cloud-to-cloud), or between a cloud and the ground ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thunderstorm
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are sometimes called thundershowers. Thunderstorms occur in a type of cloud known as a cumulonimbus. They are usually accompanied by strong winds and often produce heavy rain and sometimes snow, sleet, or hail, but some thunderstorms produce little precipitation or no precipitation at all. Thunderstorms may line up in a series or become a rainband, known as a squall line. Strong or severe thunderstorms include some of the most dangerous weather phenomena, including large hail, strong winds, and tornadoes. Some of the most persistent severe thunderstorms, known as supercells, rotate as do cyclones. While most thunderstorms move with the mean wind flow through the layer of the troposphere that they occupy, vertical wind shear sometimes caus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludger Wöste
Ludger Wöste (born May 2, 1946 in Emsbüren) is a German physicist and professor at the Free University of Berlin. He is known for research in laser control of chemistry and laser-based weather control through the creation of plasma channels by laser filamentation in air. Education and career Wöste studied physics and electrical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University from 1965 and physics at the University of Bonn from 1968 with a diploma from Herbert Walther in 1972 (deflection of a sodium atom beam in the radiation field of a dye laser) and from 1973 to 1978 as an assistant to Ernst Schumacher at the University of Bern , where he received his doctorate in 1978 (mass selective laser spectroscopy on metal atom clusters). As a postdoc he was with Richard N. Zare at Stanford University until 1980, where he worked on laser chemistry (reactions on optically oriented molecules) and then he was until 1987 project manager (photodynamic behavior of metal clusters) and lecturer at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Distribution Of Lightning
The distribution of lightning, or the incidence of individual strikes, in any particular place is highly dependent on its location, climate, and time of year. Lightning does have an underlying spatial distribution. High quality lightning data has only recently become available, but the data indicates that lightning occurs on average times every second over the entire Earth, making a total of about 1.4 billion flashes per year. Ratios of lightning types The lightning flash rate averaged over the Earth for intra-cloud (IC) + cloud-to-cloud (CC) to cloud-to-ground (CG) is in the ratio: (IC+CC):CG = 3:1. The base of the negative region in a cloud is normally at roughly the elevation where freezing occurs. The closer this region is to the ground, the more likely cloud-to-ground strikes are. In the tropics, where the freeze zone is higher, the (IC+CC):CG ratio is about 9:1. In Norway, at latitude 60° N, where the freezing elevation is lower, the (IC+CC):CG ratio is about 1:1. Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Pierre Wolf
Jean-Pierre Wolf (born July 14, 1960) is a French and Swiss physicist and biophotonics expert and a professor at the Applied Physics Department (GAP) of the University of Geneva. Education and career Wolf was born in Lausanne and studied physics at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he received his diploma in 1984 and PhD in 1987 under the supervision of Ludger Wöste. He received habilitation from the University of Lyon in 1991. Research His research activities are related with applications of ultrafast spectroscopy for biological, medical, and environmental research. He is working with Jérôme Kasparian on laser beams to control the weather. The technique is similar to cloud seeding, and could potentially influence the triggering and guiding of lightning. In 2018, he is one of the two winners of the ZEISS Zeiss or Zeiß may refer to: People *Carl Zeiss (1816–1888), German optician and entrepreneur *Emil Zeiß (1833–1910), German Protestant mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ultrashort Pulse Laser
An ultrashort pulse laser is a laser that emits ultrashort pulses of light, generally of the order of femtoseconds to one picosecond. They are also known as ultrafast lasers owing to the speed at which pulses "turn on" and "off"—not to be confused with the speed at which light propagates, which is determined by the properties of the medium (and has an upper limit), particularly its index of refraction, and can vary as a function of field intensity (i.e. self-phase modulation) and wavelength ( chromatic dispersion). Common current ultrashort pulse laser technologies include Ti-sapphire lasers and dye lasers. High output peak power usually requires chirped pulse amplification of a seed pulse from a modelocked laser. Dealing with high optical powers also needs the nonlinear optical phenomena to be taken in account. Use in Pathogen Inactivation Tsen and colleagues developed a SEPHODIS (selective photonic disinfection) technology using an ultrashort pulse laser to kill viruse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding budget of €3.3 billion. Function The DFG supports research in science, engineering, and the humanities through a variety of grant programmes, research prizes, and by funding infrastructure. The self-governed organization is based in Bonn and financed by the German states and the federal government of Germany. As of 2017, the organization consists of approximately 100 research universities and other research institutions. The DFG endows various research prizes, including the Leibniz Prize. The Polish-German science award Copernicus is offered jointly with the Foundation for Polish Science. According to a 2017 article in ''The Guardian'', the DFG has announced it will publish its research in onlin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French National Centre For Scientific Research
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engineers and technical staff, and 7,085 contractual workers. It is headquartered in Paris and has administrative offices in Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Washington, D.C., Bonn, Moscow, Tunis, Johannesburg, Santiago de Chile, Israel, and New Delhi. From 2009 to 2016, the CNRS was ranked No. 1 worldwide by the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR), an international ranking of research-focused institutions, including universities, national research centers, and companies such as Facebook or Google. The CNRS ranked No. 2 between 2017 and 2021, then No. 3 in 2022 in the same SIR, after the Chinese Academy of Sciences and before universities such as Harvard University, MIT, or Stanfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma Channel
A plasma channel is a conductive channel of plasma. A plasma channel can be formed in the following ways. # With a high-powered laser that operates at a certain frequency that will provide enough energy for an atmospheric gas to break into its ions, or form a plasma, such as in a Laser-Induced Plasma Channel, for example in an electrolaser. # With a voltage higher than the dielectric breakdown voltage applied across a dielectric, and dielectric breakdown occurs. A plasma channel has a low electrical resistance and, once formed, will permit continuous current flow if the energy source that heats the plasma can be maintained. Unlike a normal electrical conductor, the resistance (and voltage drop) across an unconfined plasma channel decreases with increasing current flow, a property called negative resistance. As a result, an electric spark that initially required a very high voltage to initiate avalanche breakdown within the insulating gas will rapidly evolve into a hot, low-volt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow. A laser differs from other sources of light in that it emits light which is ''coherent''. Spatial coherence allows a laser to be focused to a tight spot, enabling applications such as laser cutting and lithography. Spatial coherence also allows a laser beam to stay narrow over great distances ( collimation), enabling applications such as laser pointers and lidar (light detection and ranging). Lasers can also have high temporal coherence, which allows them to emit light with a very narrow spectrum. Alternatively, temporal coherence can be used to produce ultrashort puls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thunderstorms
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are sometimes called thundershowers. Thunderstorms occur in a type of cloud known as a cumulonimbus. They are usually accompanied by strong winds and often produce heavy rain and sometimes snow, sleet, or hail, but some thunderstorms produce little precipitation or no precipitation at all. Thunderstorms may line up in a series or become a rainband, known as a squall line. Strong or severe thunderstorms include some of the most dangerous weather phenomena, including large hail, strong winds, and tornadoes. Some of the most persistent severe thunderstorms, known as supercells, rotate as do cyclones. While most thunderstorms move with the mean wind flow through the layer of the troposphere that they occupy, vertical wind shear sometimes causes a d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atomic Bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to . The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to . Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as can release energy equal to more than . A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been dep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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