Drive by science

[Angakuk]

Dragons underground.

[Ari]

Dragon farts.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Ari

Dragon farts.

Thanks.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Jerome

So no one will step up and collect the $25,000? Guess your model is not what you think it is, is it.

Show me the Money.

[Ari]

Real science,
Slow motion video of lighting striking a lightning rod.

New study captures video of lightning attachment...

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Ari

Real science,
Slow motion video of lighting striking a lightning rod.
New study captures video of lightning attachment to common buildings - YouTube

I noticed that with these strikes there was a large discharge coming down and a much smaller discharge going up from the lightning rods. It seems to me that there is a great deal of variety in the direction of lightning strikes, including strikes that go from cloud to cloud.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Could you provide a link to a site rather than E-Mail addresses? I'm not ready to give my E-Mail address to some crackpot so that they can flood my mailbox with junk mail.

LMGTFY

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Jerome

LMGTFY

Wow, instructions on setting up an E-Mail account, what part of "I don't want some crackpot flooding my E-Mail box with bogus E-Mails" did you not understand?

So there is no site and no reward, it's all just some bogus made up claim, a trap to get more E-Mail addresses to pad their already phony list.

[Jerome]

Got it you will not accept a $25,000 payment for proof the world is a globe because setting up a dummy email account to protect yourself from spam is too hard.

lol

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Jerome

Got it you will not accept a $25,000 payment for proof the world is a globe because setting up a dummy email account to protect yourself from spam is too hard.

lol

Bogus, or prove it. You've got nothing.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by thedoc

I noticed that with these strikes there was a large discharge coming down and a much smaller discharge going up from the lightning rods.

I guess I could add more information, I mean, what do you think this is, a science thread?

The clouds, air and ground basically make a giant capacitor, and lightning is the breakdown of the insulating air inbetween.

Negative charge builds up in the clouds and a positive charge in the ground. Something (last I read they weren't sure what but it was hypothesised cosmic rays may have something to do with it) happens at the cloud level to start the breakdown of the insulating air to allow it to conduct better. Charges then rush to that spot and build up against the better insulator. This is called the stepped leader. The combination of heat and ionized particles then breaks the block and the leader 'steps' to the next block. These are the light trails with bright tips that you see.

On the lightning rod something similar but at a lesser scale is happening. Corona discharge occurs around any high voltage conductor caused by the electrical field being strong enough to ionize particles around it. The corona is especially strong around sharp edges and both rounds off and drops off as it gets further away, keeping things a nice glow instead of a full breakdown.

Both of these events produce tons of charged particles floating through the air that aren't bunched together enough to produce fantastic effects but certainly enough for the two charged sides to 'see' where the breakdown is coming from. As the energy increases and distance decreases the corona discharge upgrades to a breakdown in the air and starts reaching it's own current pathway out to meet the oncoming charged particles.

When the two ion channels meet it's basically the same as connecting a wire from the clouds to the ground and kaboom the electric potential energy tries to balance itself and you get a lightning strike.

If we know all of this already, what's so special about the video? It's apparently the first time all of this has been caught in the real world interacting with a standard installed lightning rod and will be used to better design lightning rods protecting buildings and other structures.

Corona discharge from the tips of a Wartenberg wheel.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Ari

I guess I could add more information, I mean, what do you think this is, a science thread?

Heaven forbid that we should discuss anything scientific in this thread.

Well considering Jerome's latest attempt to convince anyone that the world is flat, I guess we shouldn't even consider discussing anything scientific.

[But]

Originally Posted by Ari

I guess I could add more information, I mean, what do you think this is, a science thread?

The clouds, air and ground basically make a giant capacitor, and lightning is the breakdown of the insulating air inbetween.

Negative charge builds up in the clouds and a positive charge in the ground. Something (last I read they weren't sure what but it was hypothesised cosmic rays may have something to do with it) happens at the cloud level to start the breakdown of the insulating air to allow it to conduct better. Charges then rush to that spot and build up against the better insulator. This is called the stepped leader. The combination of heat and ionized particles then breaks the block and the leader 'steps' to the next block. These are the light trails with bright tips that you see.

On the lightning rod something similar but at a lesser scale is happening. Corona discharge occurs around any high voltage conductor caused by the electrical field being strong enough to ionize particles around it. The corona is especially strong around sharp edges and both rounds off and drops off as it gets further away, keeping things a nice glow instead of a full breakdown.

Both of these events produce tons of charged particles floating through the air that aren't bunched together enough to produce fantastic effects but certainly enough for the two charged sides to 'see' where the breakdown is coming from. As the energy increases and distance decreases the corona discharge upgrades to a breakdown in the air and starts reaching it's own current pathway out to meet the oncoming charged particles.

When the two ion channels meet it's basically the same as connecting a wire from the clouds to the ground and kaboom the electric potential energy tries to balance itself and you get a lightning strike.

If we know all of this already, what's so special about the video? It's apparently the first time all of this has been caught in the real world interacting with a standard installed lightning rod and will be used to better design lightning rods protecting buildings and other structures.

Corona discharge from the tips of a Wartenberg wheel.

Lightning also produces intense X-rays, so much so that people on an airplane in a thunderstorm could get radiation sickness from it. This (among other things) has gone from speculation to observed fact in recent years.

AAPLS09 "Weird Lightning" by J. Dwyer (2011 Sept...

[Ari]

I love when people use youtube for presentations.

Fire the plasma cannons!

Sprite streams - YouTube

[Stephen Maturin]

Big-ass party at my place, you guys, and all y'all are invited! I just came into an unexpected $25K and Ima spend it all!

[Ari]

I have a colony of orb weavers on my balcony.
Watching spider hunting activity has been so fascinating!

Spiders don't have ears but they 'hear' through the many different length hairs on their body especially their feet. Once they've built a web they cut the web around a signal line so it's only attached to the center of the web and then hide with a foot on the signal line.

If something impacts the web the movement on the center can be felt and the spider rushes to the center placing its legs on the radials to detect where in the web. It then plucks the radials it thinks might have something on them. The vibration change caused by weight allows them to feel where the item is or to make it wiggle more. They then attach a line to the center and run down to the spot, if it's nothing they want, they just let go and zip back up to the center to listen to the strings again. Eventually going up the signal line to hide again.

TLDR: Spiders hunt using the music of their web.

[erimir]

Yes, Spiders Eat Spiders - YouTube

Meanwhile, the portia spider plucks the strings to manipulate the orb weaver... Then eats it.

[The Lone Ranger]

Related to the above, in most spider species, males are considerably smaller than are females; this is especially true in orb weavers. In many orb weaver species, a courting male approaches a web that he thinks contains a female of his own species, and then begins plucking on one of the guide strands with a distinctive, species-specific rhythm.

If the web contains a female of his own species, and if she's feeling receptive, she will allow him to approach and mate. If the web contains a female of a different species (or a female of the same species who has already mated or otherwise isn't feeling receptive) -- her typical response is to rush out and kill him.



As for the patterns that many orb weavers (notably, spiders in the genus Argiope) weave into their webs, there is some evidence that they are mimicking nectar guides. The fact that these patterns are often made from silk that has a different chemical composition from the silk that makes up the rest of the web -- silk that is often highly reflective of ultraviolet light -- supports this supposition.


What are nectar guides? Many insects can see into the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and many flowers have patterns that are visible in ultraviolet light but not visible light. These patterns are thought to help attract the attention of pollinating insects, and guide them to where the pollen (and nectar) is located -- hence the term "nectar guides."

So, in other words, the patterns that you often see in the webs of spiders may be there to lure in pollinating insects. According to some tests, webs with these patterns capture 50% more insects, on average, than do webs which lack these patterns.

A Potentilla flower in visible light (left) and in ultraviolet light, showing the nectar guides.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Random:

Power Causes Brain Damage - The Atlantic

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

As for the patterns that many orb weavers (notably, spiders in the genus Argiope) weave into their webs, there is some evidence that they are mimicking nectar guides. The fact that these patterns are often made from silk that has a different chemical composition from the silk that makes up the rest of the web -- silk that is often highly reflective of ultraviolet light -- supports this supposition.

What are nectar guides? Many insects can see into the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and many flowers have patterns that are visible in ultraviolet light but not visible light. These patterns are thought to help attract the attention of pollinating insects, and guide them to where the pollen (and nectar) is located -- hence the term "nectar guides."

So, in other words, the patterns that you often see in the webs of spiders may be there to lure in pollinating insects. According to some tests, webs with these patterns capture 50% more insects, on average, than do webs which lack these patterns.

A Potentilla flower in visible light (left) and in ultraviolet light, showing the nectar guides.

I was familiar with the knowledge that flowers reflected patterns in the ultraviolet but I didn't know that spiders used that to lure insects into their web. It would be instructive to be able to see into the ultraviolet to see the different patterns on the flowers.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Random:

Power Causes Brain Damage - The Atlantic

I can think of some other threads that would be relevant to.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Smartphones

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Smartphones

Bull Shit, I heard the same thing many years ago about coloring books with lines in them, they were supposed the destroy a child's creativity. The professor who said that was a bit flaky. Let the child become acclimated to the latest technology, that is the way society is headed, only those who want to go backwards approve withholding the latest technology.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[Ari]

I am the Spider Sex God! (On accident). I've been trying to get them to weave webs in things I can then move so I saw a male wandering about on a line so I tried to transfer him to a structure but the wind blew him into another web and then I watched spider sex. Which seems to be a lot of vibrating a string saying "wanna do it, but um, please don't eat me." Then a dance, then more string vibration and spinning about, that I translated to "No, but really, don't eat me, K?" and a few second tap on her underside and after she told him to piss off, he escaped uneaten.

ETA: To add more, male spiders spin a small web they hold and deposit sperm onto which they then suck up with their pedipalps (the two big bulbs in front), they then use the special tips on the pedipalps to inject it into the female's reproductive opening. Since this puts the male spider at a disadvantage and may put his abdomen nearish to her fangs, those things designed for piercing and immobilizing exoskeleton creatures for dinner, there's a lot of signalling that he's of the right species and there to mate. Apparently different species have different vibrational patterns they send as code to convince the female they are really a mating male and not another species hunting it, or food. Some species include tapping her legs in a certain way that makes her still and again reminds her that it's mating time, do not bite the thing infront of you.