Lightning Can Shock Rocks At The Atomic Level
Wednesday, August 12, 2015 - 15:00
in Physics & Chemistry
Lightning Strikes John Fowler/Flickr CC by 2.0 What do a lightning strike and a meteorite have in common? Beyond the fact that they are both forms of death and destruction that fall from the sky, not much. One is a discharge of energy, the other is a solid object. But it turns out that both can have the same kind of impact on rocks, at a microscopic level. In a recent study researchers found that lightning can 'shock' tiny particles of quartz in a rock, forcing them to line up into bands called "shock lamellae," a feature previously thought to only form in the high temperatures and pressures of a meteorite impact. In order for the crystals to rearrange themselves on an atomic level to create the shock lamellae, the pressure has to be...