Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons
colliding with air molecules.
It channels some of these particles toward the poles, where they can
collide with air molecules and release energy in the form of light, producing brightly colored auroras.
When those relativistic electrons
collided with air molecules, they generated gamma rays and lower energy electrons that were the main electric current carrier that produced the strong radio pulse before the visible lightning.
Not exact matches
The team concludes that these signals are generated by speeding electrons produced when cosmic rays
collide with molecules in the
air (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.105.151101).
In what Grashorn calls a «serendipitous discovery», his team has worked out that these signals are generated by speeding electrons produced when cosmic rays
collide with molecules in the
air.
The
air around us is a chaotic superhighway of
molecules whizzing through space and constantly
colliding with each other at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour.
Fragments fly out from this collision and
collide with more
air molecules, in a cascade that continues until the energy of the original particle is spread among millions of particles raining down upon the earth.
Once this mixture of fuel droplets, and
air is inside the cylinder, and a spark occurs do the
air molecules gain kinetic energy, then
collide into the atomised fuel, and the individual fuel
molecules break apart thus turning fuel from a liquid to a gas (vaporisation), then those fuel
molecules combines
with the
air molecule, then combustion occurs?
When an
air molecule collides with the CO2
molecule the vibrational energy is converted to kinetic energy and the
air molecule is now hotter, while the CO2
molecule returns to its ground state.
When a «hot»
air molecule collides with a CO2
molecule, it can also cause the CO2
molecule to vibrate faster, and the CO2 can emit this additional energy as a photon.
Almost immediately (nanoseconds) they relax from their excited state by either 1) emitting that energy as a new photon, some of which will continue up towards space, some of which will go back downward to be reabsorbed, thus keeping the energy in the atmosphere longer, or 2) by
colliding with another gas
molecule, most likely an O2 (oxygen) or N2 (nitrogen)
molecule since they make up over 98 % of the atmosphere, thereby converting the extra vibrational energy into kinetic energy by transferring it to the other gas
molecule, which will then
collide with other
molecules, and so on, making the
air warmer.
As you say, convection uses up a lot of energy too and also counters the idea of radiative heat transfer as a big ticket item because «hot» CO2
molecules only remain so for a brief fraction of a second before they
collide with N2 or O2 to warm that localised parcel of
air; which then rises to attain equilibrium T somewhere higher and at a COLDER temp so no rad Transf!!!
It follows that a gazillion
molecules doing this in a column, perfectly vertically without ever
colliding with each other, would produce a column of
air which is hotter in the lower half than the upper.
Thermalized means the GHG
molecule collides with a non-GHG
molecule in the
air, converting the photon to kinetic energy, which can now be seen on a thermometer.
Either of these GHGs will gain energy if they absorb IR from the ground (or from GHGs in the atmosphere), but then when they
collide with other
molecules (almost always N2 or O2) they will give away that extra energy until they are at the same average energy as the rest of the
air.