4.15.2010

Weather on Planets

One thing I miss living in Los Angeles is thunderstorms. November in NYC was the last time I felt the pound of thunder and glimpsed it's progenitor, brilliant lightening sabers flashing across the ruddy sky. I was exhilarated to feel my smallness in relation to a phenomenon that occurs throughout the universe in at least a few other places:

This year, Cassini caught sight of lightening on Saturn. The sparks were spied within a storm on a part of the planet where the rings weren't so bright. They also captured it's crackling sound. Watch.


Both Voyager and Galileo have seen lightening on Jupiter. This photos shows..


Saturn's lightening is 1000 times stronger than Earth lightening. Could you imagine?


And who knows where else in the universe is lightening--that sudden rush of electrically charged particles from one place to another. From what we know, lightening begins with a separation of charges that has something to do with ice in clouds (one day, science will figure out the specifics.) So, where else in the universe does ice form in clouds structures?

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