Sunday 21 July 2019

electricity - Why does lightning emit light?


What exactly is causing the electric discharge coming from the clouds to emit light while traveling through the air. I've read and thought about it a little but with my current knowledge I cant really figure what is happening at a subatomic level. In other words, what causes the emission of photons during lightning. What I want to know is, is there some sort of collisions taking place that produces the photons we see, or is it some other interaction that is causing it?. I don't know too much about particle physics, I've only read a couple of pages in the Introduction to Elementary Particles by Griffihts. So if you could keep the answer simple then that would be great.




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