I\'m going to be brief, I just saw a Discovery Channel show that showed a lot of

Question

I'm going to be brief, I just saw a Discovery Channel show that showed a lot of interesting phenomena around lightning (like elves, how cool is that(!)), and got me wondering.

1) Thinking of lightning as a purely mechanical phenomenon, I would think the elves are the "other side of the momentum balance". What I mean is this: somewhere in some cloud formation, an event happens that triggers a lightning flash. This means a ton of electrons (and other, associated particles) that start a very fast journey to the surface of the Earth. Their momentum must be balanced by particles going in the opposite direction, hence elves. Am I right?

3) Is every arc caused by a particle collision, somewhat like in a particle accelerator? It seems logical to me: there are more than enough particles in the air to collide with, and all the light could well be some form of Brehm or Cherenkov radiation.

The question I seem to be asking is where to find good scientific theory/information about lightning. Some say we know a lot about it, but I haven't found any good papers explaining it. I have a pretty good background in physics (1st year Master student) and am not afraid of serious literature. Thanks!

Explanation / Answer

Yes and no. There is a large scale movement back and forth of electrons, but it is not their mechanical momentum that is causing the strange phenomena, it is this HUGE displacement of charge over a very long distance causing the problem. The vertical movement of ice crystals rubs electrons off and transports them to the bottom of the cloud. At the top of the cloud is a huge ball of missing electrons thus a huge positive charge exists here. With massive balls of separated charge displaced over large distances you have the attendant very large electric fields.

The electric fields extend far above the thunderstorms and into space. In the upper reaches of the atmosphere there are few atoms per unit volume and quite a few ions. Mix those with very large electric fields and strange things happen.

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