What phenomenon in chemistry are will-o'-the-wisps? (Inventory of six mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries in the world)

Ever since his brother witnessed the phenomenon of the St. Elmo Fire, atmospheric scientist Stevie Bill Ackerman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been fascinated by this mysterious phenomenon. Bill Ackerman's brother was in the storm. Let's take a look.

Taking stock of the top ten mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries in the world

St. Elmo's Fire

Taking stock of the top ten mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries in the world

Sailors at sea sometimes see a strange blue glow at the top of the mast of a ship they sail at night.

Steve Smith, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has witnessed the phenomenon since his brother witnessed it. Ekman was fascinated by this mysterious phenomenon.

Ackerman's brother was working on some copper pipes in the basement during the storm. He said: "At this time, thunderstorm clouds gradually moved over the area, and then suddenly there was a blue light above some copper pipes. Since then, I have been trying to find out what caused this phenomenon."

Thunderstorm clouds produce a strong electric field, and because there is a large potential difference between the ground and the thunderstorm cloud, you can think of it as an electrostatic phenomenon. This field is reinforced at the end of a sharp object, such as a metal pipe or the top of a ship's mast.

If this electric field is strong enough, it can even tear air molecules into charged particles. As a result, the air becomes "plasma", which emits light.

You can also reproduce this plasma glow phenomenon in the laboratory. One method is to use sharp objects to increase the intensity of the internal electric field. However, although China has understood its cause, Ekman still hopes that he can see these naturally occurring "St. Elmo's Fire" phenomena again in the natural development environment. He said: "I so far I haven't been able to see it once, but I hope students may have many opportunities to see it in the future. "

Like St. Elmore's fire, the Swamp Ghost Fire is a mystery. The luminous phenomenon has been heard about for centuries.

Eyewitness skepticism can roughly be felt by its name, a luminous phenomenon that has never been replicated in the laboratory.

According to eyewitness descriptions, the swamp ghost fire is like a fire, flashing and steady, very close to the ground. It usually occurs in suburban swamps, is short-lived, and usually disappears within minutes.

Luigi Galasicelli comes from the University of Pavia in Italy. His most famous achievement is replicating the famous Shroud of Turin in the laboratory. Garacicelli was also interested in the phenomenon of will-o'-the-wisps in nature, but still had no case that he could study.

Galasikali said: "The real question is, maybe this phenomenon does not exist at all. We must choose trust or hope. Those witnesses who claim to have seen the will-o'-the-wisp phenomenon are not lying." And if Such so-called "will-o'-the-wisp" phenomena do exist in nature, so Galasicelli will test several potential possibilities. For example, this kind of will-o'-the-wisp fires are believed to occur mostly in swamps, so they are probably related to the flammable gases released by swamps, of which methane is the main component. But the question here is how these gases are ignited.

Or, the fundamental problem with these eyewitness reports is that they are false. Perhaps they are illusions created by the eyewitnesses' own minds, or the lack of light is actually the reflection of moonlight on the wet ground. Witnesses mistakenly mistook it for fire.

Friedman Friedrich, an expert at the US Institute for Research on Extraterrestrial Civilizations (SETI), said: "You feel like you are in the middle of a huge ball of light."

This is how you might feel when you encounter earthquake light. Mr Forlund said the light was a type of air ion light that appeared when large amounts of static electricity accumulated under great stress in certain types of rock formations.

"We suspect that when we press the rock layers on both sides together at very high speeds, the large amount of charge released during the process will appear in the form of a plasma discharge," he said. However, for A specific external manifestation, which may come in many different forms or colors.

The seismic light emitted when an earthquake occurs appears to be released from the ground and can be distributed several kilometers away. The light can reach heights of 200 to 300 meters in the night sky, lasts only a fraction of a second, but appears again and again, one after another.

The increasing popularity of surveillance cameras in recent years has allowed people to capture some very beautiful images of earthquake light. "Some of the best-quality light-recorded images of earthquakes have been found in Peru," Wallander said. "A friend of mine who works at a local university happened to record light images of the earthquake during a magnitude 8 earthquake south of Lima, Peru. Seismic waves are reaching the local area, and there are strong seismic lights in the sky. ”

For a long time, many people thought that ball lightning was nothing more than a cultural legend, but in fact, this phenomenon is. It is the real situation of the enterprise.

In 2012, a research team conducted routine lightning monitoring on the Qinghai Plateau in China.

This is the first time humans have studied the true ball lightning phenomenon in nature. Scientists captured the spectrum of this bright ball lightning through analysis in an attempt to understand the true nature of this mysterious phenomenon.

Analysis showed that the source indicated in the ball lightning spectrum was: soil. Under normal circumstances, streaks of lightning pointing toward the ground from storm clouds strike the ground, evaporating some minerals from the soil. Some of them contain silicate compounds, which in some extreme cases can react and produce silica gel.

These filaments are chemically very reactive and, once created, react with oxygen in the air and burn, forming the bright fireballs seen by the researchers.

Sometimes, just before the sun sets, a bright green light will appear above the sun. But it's not because the sun changes color, it's because it's a mirage effect.

The earth's environment and atmosphere system will decompose the white light emitted by the sun into light of different colors, just like the function of a prism: red light has a longer wavelength, and it will not be affected at all by the enterprise. Develop some, then orange, yellow, and so on. Since red light suffers the strongest bending intensity effect, it seems to us that red light begins to fall into the horizon first, followed by orange light, yellow light and green light in sequence.

The colors of light that follow green light - blue, indigo and violet - are strongly scattered by atmospheric molecules, which is why the sky we usually see is blue.

Under normal circumstances, the effect of this difference between color and light is very small. To see a green light, an optical illusion effect is also needed to make the sun appear larger. Under this illusion, the sun appears to be swaying, like ripples on water. Sea level often creates the perfect conditions for this strange green flash.

Upward Lightning

Taking stock of the world's top ten mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries

In 1935, a surveillance camera on top of the Empire State Building in New York discovered some strange Karl Mai Keklen: The camera recorded a flash of lightning, but it didn't point from the clouds to the ground like normal lightning. Instead, it points from the Empire State Building to thunderstorm clouds.

Meteorologists now know that there is one upward flash of lightning for every 1,000 lightning strikes. However, although this phenomenon has been studied for decades, scientists still do not understand its mechanism.

Storm photographer Tom Warner is currently becoming a member of the South Dakota Vocational College of Mines and Technology in the United States, who is committed to researching the causes and mechanisms of specific problems with upward lightning. He and other researchers have been able to show that there are two different types of upward lightning, but both require the presence of tall structures, such as high-rise buildings or wind turbine towers.

For the first type of upward lightning to occur, it first requires regular lightning strikes from the cloud to the nearby ground.

The second type does not require pre-existing lightning nearby, but can spontaneously produce upward lightning. Since becoming fascinated with the phenomenon in 2004, Werner has studied and photographed this rare phenomenon several times. To obtain valuable data and images, he would fly his own plane into storm clouds.

He said: "It feels really great to be able to experience a storm at such a close range, or even ride inside a storm cloud! This is a huge challenge that requires You are attentive. Every time I fly through heavy rain clouds, I will confirm again that the work here is really not suitable for flying!"

"Red Elf"

Inventory The world's top ten mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries

In the extremely high altitude above the heavy rain clouds, far away from the thunderstorm cloud system and the lightning phenomenon caused by ground discharges. However, sometimes there are ghostly red flashes that can range from tens to thousands of kilometers. From a distance, it looks like a plant tendril or jellyfish tentacle hanging in the sky.

This social phenomenon is now called "red elf" or "ghost lightning". Generally, companies will only continue to appear in very important and large-scale thunderstorm cloud systems. "This cultural phenomenon occurs with extremely high intensity," said Martin Falkrug of the University of Bath in the UK. "Thunderstorm cloud systems must develop to produce a certain degree of special flashes, but this economic phenomenon is extremely rare. Perhaps in It takes 1,000 lightning strikes to cause a ghost lightning phenomenon. "

Such lightning takes away a large amount of charge from the thundercloud system.

Previous documentation of the phenomenon has been extremely rare, but as camera prices continue to fall, reports of the mysterious red flash are on the rise.

An ordinary closed-circuit television equipped with a night vision camera with better quality management can occasionally record red sprite images with poor image information quality, and amateur meteor observers are also concerned about this society. The accumulation and development of data technology for the observation and research of phenomena have made great contributions.

“You can take a low-quality photo of a red elf with a camera that costs a few hundred pounds.

With a little guidance, everyone can do it! " said Fokker Krueger

Fairy Lightning

Taking stock of the world's top ten mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries

Elf lightning (ELVES) looks like a huge donut, and its duration is generally less than 1 millisecond, which is very short.

Just by listening to the name, you can see that this phenomenon is similar to the previous one. The "Red Elf" mentioned is very similar.

This phenomenon generally occurs on the ground at an altitude of 80 to 100 kilometers, and there is still a clear difference from the appearance of the "Red Elf". It's a halo that expands outward," said Volkruger. It looks like a donut from space with a black hole in the middle that's more than 1,000 kilometers in diameter."

Elf Lightning Flash It is fleeting and lasts for no more than 1 millisecond. To affect this social phenomenon, we need a relatively special type of lightning in the thunderstorm cloud system, which has an instantaneous increase in current intensity. Unlike the red elf, the elf lightning requires a rapid discharge process, so it is unlikely that the two phenomena will occur at the same time.

In comparison, elves occur more frequently than red elves, with one elf appearing every 1 to 100 lightning strikes.

Elves usually appear white due to their high strength. "They happen very, very quickly," Fokluger said. So it's generally hard to see with the naked eye. I have never been able to see it myself, although I often deliberately look for it. "

5. Blue jets and giant jets

Check out the top ten mysterious will-o'-the-wisp mysteries in the world

"The blue jet is still a mystery. " Falkrug said. "The first problem is that they are blue. The blue atmosphere is difficult to learn from the ground because the sky is blue. Furthermore, this phenomenon occurs on a small scale and is very rare.

"We don't know what the ideal environmental conditions are for blue jets to occur," folkgrug said. One theory is that when thunderstorms reach very high altitudes, they begin to enter the upper atmosphere. "There is a very strong upwelling within the thunderstorm clouds, which will cause them to rise above normal levels. When that happens, the blue jet appears, but we can't be sure yet," he said

But there's another mystery, known as "giant jets," which appear to be a mix of blue jets and red sprites, researchers have learned. They are broad wedges of light that are easier to see and last between. Between 10 and 100 milliseconds, the duration is relatively long compared to other thunderstorms

Falkrug said: "A very classic jumbo jet phenomenon can be observed off the coast of Africa. However, they are very rare. Generally, there are 1 to 10 jumbo jets for every 100 red elves. ”

Aurora

Take stock of the world’s top ten mysterious will-o’-the-wisp mysteries

The aurora at the north and south poles of the earth are a visual feast: blue, green, red, ethereal, But it is an accurate reference for space weather events hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

Charles Swanson of Utah State University in the United States pointed out: "Aurora can have many different shapes and structures, which mainly depends on it. Earth's magnetic field. "

The Earth is not the only planet with auroras. "Only a few conditions are needed to produce auroras: the magnetic field, the atmosphere and the influence of the solar wind," Swanson said. Jupiter and Saturn both have very special auroras because Their atmospheres are different from those of Earth. But in fact, auroras are not only visible to the naked eye, but they also contain components that are invisible to us, which is what Swanson is studying.

He said: "The question now is, are the changes and movements of these invisible parts of the aurora synchronized with the aurora we can see? Although related research has just started, I think the answer to this question should be yes.

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