» Home > In the News

The Sun and Lightning

20 November 2014
Astronomy

At http://phys.org/print335609396.html … we are told the Sun may be playing a part in the generation of lightning strikes on Earth by temporarily bending the Earth's magnetic field and allowing a shower of energetic particles to enter the upper atmosphere. Researchers from Reading University have been looking at this for some 5 years and their findings have been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (this month). Dr Matt Owens says, 'the Sun's magnetic field is like a bar magnet so that as the Sun rotates its magnetic field alternately points towards and away from the Earth, pulling the Earth's magnetic field one way and then another' which appears to sound more and more like an Electric Universe. The research also includes galactic cosmic rays, that are channelled to different locations around the planet and go on to trigger lightning in already charged up clouds. Thunderstorms act like an extra battery in the atmospheric electric circuit.

At http://phys.org/print335602800.html … NASA are to launch a rocket from the top of Norway in order to study the interaction of the solar wind with the atmosphere at the cusp of the Earth, those regions around the poles that allow plasma from the Sun to steal inside the magnetosphere.

Skip to content