A while back I stumbled on a very cool pic:
Now, this very cool pic had some pretty significant ramifications and fit perfectly into a conspiracy theory at the time. In short, they are perceived to be powerful enough to do damage to things that ordinarily would withstand lightning strikes. Some, me included, felt sprites might have been responsible for the Shuttle Columbia’s breakup.
Fast forward several years and we have two stories making the rounds. The first one involves Air Fracne Flight 447 mysteriously breaking up over the Atlantic Ocean. The initial headlines were from the only communication received during the break-up, emergency transmissions from Flight 447 indicated multiple major electrical malfunctions. This story has grabbed the world’s attention. Another story that has gotten a lot less publicity is a photo taken by Oscar van der Velde in Spain:
http://spaceweather.com/
Flight 447 was entering an area of intense storms. Some speculated it may have been hit by lightning, which could have ruined the radar system, which would have allowed to the pilots to fly the plane into even heavier storms. Pretty tall story to buy since most jets are lightning protected, with only a minimal chance of losing their radar. And, if they had lost their radar, they still would have had time to turn back, fly around, or contact air traffic controllers. Losing radar is just not that huge a deal. However, a sprite strike would be a completely different situation. These things are supposedly positive grounded. Ergo, traditional lightning protection, which protects against negative grounding, would have been pretty much useless. And, those planes fly awful high in the sky. Sprites are awful high in the sky as well. I’m not taking the leap of faith that this definitely did it. But, I sure would like to see some research into the possibility.
Category: Technology | Tagged with Columbia, elve, flight 447, lightning, Oscar van der Velde, shuttle, sprite
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