Lightning Over Athens
Explanation:
Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe?
Join the crowd.
Oddly, nobody knows exactly how
lightning is produced.
What is known is that charges slowly separate in some clouds causing rapid electrical discharges
(lightning), but how electrical charges get separated in clouds remains a topic of much research.
Lightning usually takes a jagged course,
rapidly heating a thin column of air to about three times the surface temperature of the
Sun.
The resulting shock wave starts
supersonically and decays into the
loud sound known as
thunder.
Lightning bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms, and on average
6,000 lightning bolts occur between clouds and the Earth every minute.
Pictured above, an
active lightning storm was recorded over
Athens,
Greece earlier this month.
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