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prashantakerkar prashantakerkar
wrote...
Valued Member
Posts: 1645
4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

Do Lightning occur in all nine planets of the solar system?

Earth  - Yes
Jupiter - Yes / No
Mars - Yes / No
Venus - Yes / No
Saturn - Yes / No
Neptune - Yes / No
Pluto - Yes / No
Uranus - Yes / No
Mercury - Yes / No

Thanks & Regards,
Prashant S Akerkar
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Prashant S Akerkar
Replies
wrote...
Valued Member
Educator
4 years ago Edited: 4 years ago, bio_man
Earth  - Yes / No
Jupiter - Yes / No
Mars - Yes / No
Venus - Yes / No
Saturn - Yes / No
Neptune - Yes / No (we don't know)
Pluto - Yes / No (we don't know)
Uranus - Yes / No (we don't know)
Mercury - Yes / No

Whistler waves are distinctive radio frequency noise produced by lightning, and seem more or less the same wherever you go. This makes it easy to find lightning. Voyager One heard them on Jupiter and Saturn which feature perpetual storms, and Venera heard them on Venus. Later probes showed that on Venus this was definitely lightning and also more or less perpetual on the night side. Fairly recently it was also shown that dust storms on Mars can produce powerful lightning.

On Earth most lightning is cloud to cloud and is not a threat to things on the ground. Nobody has photographed cloud to ground lightning on another planet yet.
wrote...
Valued Member
4 years ago
Thank you.

What are the reasons that we do not know whether lightning occurs in Neptune, Uranus & Pluto planets.

Can NASA assist in this regard?

Thanks & Regards,
Prashant S Akerkar
Prashant S Akerkar
wrote...
Valued Member
Educator
4 years ago
What are the reasons that we do not know whether lightning occurs in Neptune, Uranus & Pluto planets.

I believe it's because they're simply too far away to accurate detect any weather patterns. Neptune, for example, is too far away from the Sun to have seasons like Earth, or generate that sort of effect.
wrote...
Staff Member
4 years ago
I think @bio_man's wrong here.

Neptune does have clouds and there is research you can read on it.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103599961018

Electrostatic discharges in planetary atmospheres appear to be common throughout the Solar System, occurring on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and possibly Venus and Neptune. Lightning is generally caused by the separation of electric charge on precipitating particles and therefore requires the presence of condensed cloud layers. Neptune has several cloud layers, including a high-altitude methane cloud, a H2S–NH3 layer, and deeper layers of water and ammonium hydrosulfide (NH4SH). Neptune appears to be a good candidate for lightning and other dynamic atmospheric phenomena because of its large internal heat source. Despite the presence of radio-frequency whistlers often associated with lightning, lightning has never been optically detected on Neptune. This may indicate that lightning is occurring too deep in the atmosphere to be seen at visible wavelengths. We investigate the possibility of lightning on Neptune using a particle-growth and charge-separation model that has previously been successfully applied to the Earth and Jupiter. We find that lightning is inhibited in the deep water or NH4SH cloud because of the high atmospheric pressures there; lightning seems possible in the H2S–NH3 cloud provided that transfer of charge can occur at a rate not less than 1% of that seen in water ice collisions.
- Master of Science in Biology
- Bachelor of Science
wrote...
Valued Member
Educator
4 years ago
Despite the presence of radio-frequency whistlers often associated with lightning, lightning has never been optically detected on Neptune. This may indicate that lightning is occurring too deep in the atmosphere to be seen at visible wavelengths.
wrote...
Valued Member
4 years ago
Thanks.

Can NASA assist in this regard?

Thanks & Regards,
Prashant S Akerkar
Prashant S Akerkar
Answer accepted by topic starter
bio_manbio_man
wrote...
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Posts: 33225
4 years ago
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