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Rather than distortions of suspended droplets, perhaps these are
"sundogs" or parhelia optical
patterns caused by solar reflection from aligned ice crystals. A changing
e-field could rotate all the ice plates or needles, causing the sundog to
suddenly change shape and position. Or less likely, perhaps some
condensing droplets are changing size under e-field influence
(growth/shrinkage of small droplets is known to be altered by strong
electrostatic fields.)
I just heard that relatively tiny e-field of 1V/mm will influence the
orientation of suspended ice crystals, and 10V/mm will totally align them.
Storm fields are far stronger, so "leaping sundogs" should be quite
common. See 2002 Foster/Hallett
paper on ice crystal electrostatics, via Google Scholar.
Aren't these just some sort of camera artifact? Well, "Chance Favors the
Prepared Mind." In the past I've seen exactly these sweeping variable
light patterns. In
miniature. In a
bottle. A bottle filled with fluid-suspended ferrous microparticles
aligned by a nearby magnet. The b-field causes the particles to
self-assemble into fibers, and the aligned fibers reflect light in an odd
manner: forming bright "loops" and "beams" which change with alterations
in the
b-field, illumination angle, and the viewing position. Those
green-colored
magnetic field viewer-cards behave similarly in direct sunlight. With
"aligned-needle optics," people in different locations should see
different
patterns of light in the clouds. Or if it's flat ice crystals, perhaps
they'd only be visible over a
small angle, and you'd need luck to be positioned just in the right
viewing window. That would explain the rarity of reports of
Crown
Flash.
"If you haven't found something strange during the day,
it hasn't been much of a day." - J. A. Wheeler
LINKS
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered;
the point
is to discover them." - Galileo Galilei
Speculations (new 7/2011)
Knowing that the visible brightness of suspended ice crystals can be
influenced by an e-field with value greater than 1V/mm, we might wish to
search old eyewitness accounts (or online videos) for similar phenomena
which have yet to be reported:
- E-fields could cause transient flashing or brightness alteration
of high ice clouds during earthquakes. Piezoelectric output of bedrock?
If a slight cirrus overcast should become totally aligned by strong
fields, ice clouds would no longer have random particle orientation to
produce optical scattering. They might change from white to transparent,
and eyewitnesses might report a sudden "darkening of the sky."
- Same as above: transient flashing or brightness alteration of
cirrus clouds in the period before earthquakes. Various
quake-precursor phenomena perhaps may produce significant e-fields.
- Very wide static (or moving) bright/dark bands in high ice clouds
clouds caused by RF standing waves in the Earth's Schumann atmospheric EM
waveguide. Low-frequency AC e-fields should align ice crystals, although
the threshold value is probably larger than 1V/mm.
- Distortion of the subsun, or perhaps coherent shifting of the
subsun. Subsuns observed from airliners resemble solar reflections on
water, but if their observed position is altered by storm fields, the
subsun would not be seen to appear directly below the real sun. In that
case the perceived glowing spot might be reported as an unidentified
aircraft which follows the airliner. If such a subsun were observed to
move during lightning discharges, easily attaining perceived velocities
far in excess of the speed of sound, the eyewitness reports of this would
be very strange.
- Reports of two observed suns. This most often should occur at
sunrise/sunset during conditions of wide-area overcast of high ice clouds.
If ice crystals are aligned and a "super-sun" happens to be moved into a
position visible from the ground, then eyewitnesses will report seeing a
second sun accompanying the real one.
- Boloid reports with no boloid. This might occur most often
during sunset/sunrise with high ice cloud overcast. If ice crystals are
aligned by e-fields and a "super-sun" becomes visible from ground
locations, and if a dynamically changing e-field then causes the supersun
to move across the (electrically darkened) sky, eyewitnesses may report
seeing a giant meteor. But because different supersuns would be
observed from different locations on the ground, the eyewitness reports of
boloid trajectory would inexplicably conflict. Since dynamically changing
e-fields wouldn't necessarily produce an ordinary bolide trajectory, the
"boloid" might be seen to move in non-parabolic trajectories, to stop in
place, or to suddenly change direction. And of course no evidence of
impact would exist.
"I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man
is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men,
who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations
which would have proven servicable." - Charles Darwin
LUNAR SUBSUN?
I've occasionally heard reports of two moons in the sky.
Quite a few reports, but no photos. Yet this effect might not be
totally impossible. For example, during an airplane trip over desert, if
there is a layer of cirrostratus or cirrus below you, and if the sun is
near the horizon, sometimes you see a second sun below the first. It
looks just like a reflection on water, as if there is a big lake
hidden below the clouds. But under the clouds is desert and mountains.
The "water" is actually a layer of suspended ice crystals, all of them
hovering horizontally like tiny dinnerplates. Together they form a
crude mirror. So, what if you were BELOW this mirror? If the moon
was out at night, and if it was very low in the sky, then maybe you'd
see a "subsun" moon reflection. But it would be upside-down from a
normal subsun. The real moon would have a false moon hanging in the
sky above it. If the image was clear enough, the higher "false moon"
would apparently be a mirror-image of the real one.
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