Is it breakdown of air causing e to move in the opposite direction of the field , where collision with atoms emit light. And we can see it as lightning
@ACuriousMind idk what are leaders and upward streamers and well
"In a process not well understood, a bidirectional channel of ionized air, called a "leader", is initiated between oppositely-charged regions in a thundercloud."
what's unclear about that, except that it's very clear that we don't entirely know what's going on?
what happens before lightning is that the air gets ionized, like the Wiki article says. "Ionization" is just another word for "electrical breakdown"
but there's a substantial difference between just having ionized air and having actual lightning - you can have ionized air without having the gigantic energies of a lightning strike travelling through it
@ACuriousMind when the field between two regions is strong enough it would rip out electrons from atoms. These collide with other atoms creating light. What is this light then if not lightning
@cOnnectOrTR12 lightning is the current flowing through the channel of ionized air, not the mere existence of the plasma
also, the light from lightning is blackbody radiation because the air plasma gets so heated by the current flowing through it, it's not about specific collisions caused by the ionization
you don't get lightning juut from having a strong field, you get it from having a strong field and then moving a lot of charge quickly through the ion channel that strong field creates
@ACuriousMind so strong field will create plasma not lightning. But where do these lot of charges come from if not the electrons freed up recently by the strong field
@cOnnectOrTR12 1. If you'd read the Wiki article you'd know that (or at least what speculations exist). 2. Where do you think the strong field comes from if not from a lot of charge sitting somewhere waiting to be discharged?
So the plasma is created by the collision of ions with freed electrons. And through this channel or path the lot of charges flow creating more current and light. That is lightning
@ACuriousMind I read the article and what I understood from that is that due to the accumulation of charge in one region strong field is created. This strong field start ionising the air molecules causing it to lose electrons. A path of ionised air or channel builds up in zigzag fashion which move downwards. Same way a path of leader moves upward from the ground. When these two paths meet they create strong electrical discharge known as lightning
@NiharKarve if you mean the "flappy" question, I think there's filters on what sort of words can appear in HNQ titles that'll prevent it from going hot
@cOnnectOrTR12 well, as the article says, we don't really understand how the ion channel is formed. I'm not sure why you insist on me approving or not approving of some simplified summary - if you're fine with that explanation, what does it matter whether I think it's good?
@DIRAC1930 not really (because the Dirac equation is an equation in 4 components while the KG equation is an equation in a single component), but each of the components of a solution to the Dirac equation also fulfills the KG equation
I thought the projective reps. arrise because we only need to consider the representations up to a phase due to the inner product being invariant under phase transformations or something
@RyanUnger I just think that we just have to add "the universe has a spin structure" to our axioms when we do GR physics with spinors, just like we have "the universe is a pseudo-Riemannian manifold" when we do GR
