The return stroke (the current that cause the visible flash) moves upward at a speed of about
320,000,000 ft per second
or about 220,000,000 miles per hour (about 1/3 the speed of light). In comparison, the sound of thunder travels at about 1100 ft per second or about 750 miles per hour.
What is faster light or lightning?
Comparing it with the average lightning speed,
Light is ~ 675.45 times faster
.
Which is faster lightning or sound?
Lightning and thunder happen at the same time. But you see lightning before you hear thunder because
light, which travels a million times faster than sound
, arrives almost instantly. Sound, on the other hand, takes about five seconds to travel one mile.
How fast does lighting travel?
Light from a stationary source travels at
300,000 km/sec
(186,000 miles/sec).
Can lightning power a city?
Lightning is both incredibly powerful and crazy fast. While it's true that
a single lightning bolt could power the entire city of Santa Fe for about a minute
, there are some issues with capturing lightning as an energy source.
Is lightning hotter than the sun?
In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (
5 times hotter than the surface of the sun
). When lightning strikes a tree, the heat vaporizes any water in its path possibly causing the tree to explode or a strip of bark to be blown off.
Are Tachyons real?
A tachyon (/ˈtækiɒn/) or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light.
Physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are not consistent with the known laws of physics
.
How far is lightning per second?
| If thunder is heard The lightning is . . . | 5 seconds after a flash 1 mile away | 10 seconds after a flash 2 miles away | 15 seconds after a flash 3 miles away | 20 seconds after a flash 4 miles away |
|---|
What is the fastest thing in the universe?
Light
travels about 186,270 miles (more than seven times the circumference of Earth) in one second. In modern physics, light is regarded as the fastest thing in the universe, and its velocity in empty space as a fundamental constant of nature.
Which is first thunder or lightning?
If we are watching the sky,
we see the lightning before we hear the thunder
. That is because light travels much faster than sound waves. We can estimate the distance of the lightning by counting how many seconds it takes until we hear the thunder.
Can you have thunder without lightning?
No, it is not possible to have thunder without lightning
. Thunder starts as a shockwave from the explosively expanding lightning channel when a large current causes rapid heating. However, it is possible that you might see lightning and not hear the thunder because it was too far away.
Does thunder travel a mile a second?
So sound travels 1 kilometer in roughly 3 seconds and
1 mile in roughly 5 seconds
. When you see the flash of a lightning bolt, you can start counting seconds and then divide to see how far away the lightning struck.
What is the speed of dark?
Darkness travels at
the speed of light
. More accurately, darkness does not exist by itself as a unique physical entity, but is simply the absence of light. Any time you block out most of the light – for instance, by cupping your hands together – you get darkness.
Can humans travel at the speed of light?
Can we travel at the speed of light?
No, we cannot travel at the speed of light
. You see, if an object travels at the speed of light, its mass will increase exponentially!
How Far Can lightning travel?
Lightning can travel
10 to 12 miles
from a thunderstorm. This is often farther than the sound of thunder travels. That means that if you can hear thunder you are close enough to a storm to be in danger of being struck by lightning. When thunder roars go indoors.
Why can't we harness lightning?
How hot is a lightning bolt?
Lightning can get five times hotter than the sun. The surface of the sun is estimated to be 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. However, a lightning strike can reach
50,000 degrees Fahrenheit
. This is because air is a poor conductor of heat, so it gets extremely hot when the electricity (lightning) passes through it.
Can lightning be created artificially?
Artificial lightning (in miniature) is regularly created in places like NEETRAC at Georgia Tech
. An artificial lightning bolt. This lightning is generated using capacitor banks (not rubbing stuff together, the way natural lightning is created) and is feeble by comparison to the real thing.
What color is lightning?
The distinctive
blue-white
color of lightning is caused by light emitted as the electrons drop back to their original energy states. Seen from above, lightning storms also produce less well-known emissions of blue or red light above the clouds, known as jets and sprites.
Is car safe during lightning storm?
Cars are safe from lightning because of the metal cage surrounding the people inside the vehicle
. This may sound counter-intuitive because metal is a good conductor of electricity, but the metal cage of a car directs the lightning charge around the vehicle occupants and safely into the ground.
What's hotter lightning or lava?
Which is hotter sun lava or lightning? Lightning because lightning is 70,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Lava is just 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit. So
lightning is hotter than lava
.
Is there a time particle?
Time comes from every particle within our bodies
, including our DNA that is made of these same atoms and particles. Time is the frequency of longitudinal energy waves. However, time is not constant. It changes with motion.
Can God travel faster than light?
It seems, so far, that
no object has been observed that can travel faster than the speed of light
. This in itself does not say anything at all about God. It merely reinforces the knowledge that light travels very fast indeed.
How fast is a neutrino?
Neutrinos are subatomic particles that have almost no mass and can zip through entire planets as if they are not there. Being nearly massless, neutrinos should travel at nearly the speed of light, which is approximately
186,000 miles (299,338 kilometers) a second
.
Does counting seconds after lightning work?
A general rule of thumb to know how far off a bolt of lightning is when you hear thunder,
if you count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder, and then divide by 5, you'll get the distance in miles to the lightning
: 5 seconds = 1 mile, 15 seconds = 3 miles, 0 seconds = very close.
What is the 30 30 rule for lightning?
Don't forget the 30-30 rule.
After you see lightning, start counting to 30
. If you hear thunder before you reach 30, go indoors. Suspend activities for at least 30 minutes after the last clap of thunder.
How many miles per second does sound travel?
On a standard day at sea level static conditions, the speed of sound is about 760 mph, or
1100 feet/second
. We can use this knowledge to approximately determine how far away a lightning strike has occurred. When lightning strikes, a bright flash of light is generated.
