Thunderstorm Research Shocks Conventional Theories; Florida Tech Physicist Throws Open Debate On Lightning's Cause

ScienceDaily (Nov. 6, 2003)

In the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner caps two years of lightning research with a startling conclusion: The conditions inside thunderstorms that were long thought necessary to produce lightning actually do not exist in nature.

"For generations, we've believed that in order to produce a lightning discharge, the electric fields inside storms must be very big, similar to the fields that cause you to be shocked when you touch a metal doorknob," said Dwyer.

The problem is scientists have searched inside thunderstorms for many years, looking for these large electric fields, only to come up empty handed. Some researchers have suggested that maybe we haven't been looking hard enough; maybe the big electric fields are really there, but they were somehow just missed. Now, Dwyer's new theory shows that these searches were actually in vain; super-sized fields simply don't exist.

"What we've discovered is a new limit in nature. Just as a bucket can only hold so much water, the atmosphere can only hold a certain sized electric field. Beyond that, the electric field is stunted by the rapid creation of gamma-rays and a form of anti-matter called positrons," he said.

While Dwyer's research shows that lightning is not produced by large, unseen electric fields inside storms, the triggering mechanism remains a mystery.

"Although everyone is familiar with lightning, we still don't know much about how it really works," said Dwyer.

Text 3

Practice 1. Choose the key sentence in each paragraph.

Practice 2. Re-read the text to find out the author’s main idea:

1. The electric charge between oil and water is not caused by the inevitable "impurities" present in oils, but rather by certain intrinsic properties of the water molecules involved

2. Water repelling molecules are said to be hydrophobic .

3 The hydration is important for many biological processes: protein folding, membrane formation, transport of proteins across an interface, the transmission of action potentials across membranes.

4 Hydrophobic interfaces although long studied, are poorly understood.

Practice 3. Make a review of the text.

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Electricity From The Exhaust Pipe	\|	Illuminating the No-Man's Land of Waters' Surface: Strong Electric Charge Observed at the Interface Between Oil and Water Is Not Due to Impurities

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