Diffuse green cord of light from the sky

[DROBNJAK]

It definitely looks as it was a natural phenomenon.

OK, so this is how it went: there was a crack at a bottom of the pool. Water leaked through the crack into the soil bellow the pool. That would make the soil very conductive and it would attract electric currents. Now in the highly conductive soil electric sparks operated by braking down water and air and creating ions. That lasted about 2-3 minutes, which is very probable.

Now question is if electric field in the crack was producing ions, than it was something like electrolysis, so sparks must had produced some gas bubbles as well.

- Did you notice any gas bubbles?

If ions were produced in the crack at a bottom of the pool, than there should had been a green ionized column inside of the body of the water in the pool.

- Did you see any green column inside the water?

Another thing, ions glow when they are hit by radiation, say from the electric sparks. Once they emit the electron, they stop glowing. In other words, by the time ions got out of the water, they were not hit anymore by radiation, so they should had stopped glowing green?

- How do you explain that ions kept on glowing, even when they were not in contact with sparks in the crack?

 

[Constance]

Sorry for the confusion Constance - the cord was perfectly vertical, like a pillar, except for the slight curves as it twisted around a little bit (within a foot or two of a vertical line) at some height above us, probably from a gentle air movement higher up. I just meant that it was at a right angle to the pool water.

Thanks for clarifying that, Thomas.

 

[William Strathmann]

It definitely looks as it was a natural phenomenon.

OK, so this is how it went: there was a crack at a bottom of the pool. Electric sparks operated in the crack for about 2-3 minutes and produced ions.

Now question is if electric field in the crack was producing ions, than it was something like electrolysis, so sparks must had produced some gas bubbles as well.

- Did you notice any gas bubbles?

If ions were produced in the crack at a bottom of the pool, than there should had been a green ionized column inside of the body of the water in the pool.

- Did you see any green column inside the water?

Another thing, ions glow when they are hit by radiation, say from the electric sparks. Once they emit the electron, they stop glowing. In other words, by the time ions got out of the water, they were not hit anymore by radiation, so they should had stopped glowing green?

- How do you explain that ions kept on glowing, even when they were not in contact with sparks in the crack?

Here, DROBNJAK is yet another easy-to-read article about this phenomenon, and one of the examples in the article is of light coming up from pavement.

For instance, just before the earthquake that struck L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009, bystanders reported flames flickering up from the pavement.​

In the article Dr. Freund says that there is a lot that is still not clear to him about the cause.

IMHO, very high electrical charge may be involved. That brings in issues of dielectric (as in capacitance), and permittivity. Perhaps a quartz vein, or similar rock, runs from an area of very high stress to pretty much directly below the pool. That could probably carry a "point" charge well enough. Not to mention that in Burbank on a still night there was probably a dose of smog to help provide ion coloration in a particular spectrum. The charged ions of the cord may have nothing to do with flowing electricity, but may be related to high electrical potential charge and dielectric properties of the soil, pool, water, and air-smog.

 

[DROBNJAK]

Yeah, I got it, more or less. This might explain a lot about ball lightnings.

Only problem is ions only glow in that very moment when they are hit by radiation. Once they are out of the crack, they'll top glowing.

Thanks for the article.

 

[William Strathmann]

In my wild musings about this, I am thinking roughly along the lines of an aurora, but involving a vertical electrical field instead of a magnetic field at the pole.

I'm also thinking along the lines of the "leader" of a lightning bolt, but at much lower energy.

So, instead of the very, very high negative charge at the base of the high-altitude thunderhead, which sends a leader to ground, and then the massive discharge to ground, we have a very high positive charged ground, and a much lower negatively charged atmosphere, which, all told, is much, much lower than the field differential of a T-storm. But there is still an electrical field differential, and I think this may sufficiently excite the molecules into ionization, along the column of the point electrical field from below the pool into the atmosphere.

My wild guess.

 

[DROBNJAK]

Hmmmm, electric field has tendency to disperse, like to have high divergence, as they call it. The only way it would form a narrow band if there were two opposite charges near each other. So, there is a highly positive spot on the ground and than there is a very negative cloud passing over. Which kind off, depends on chance too much.

Auroras are managed by Earth's magnetic field, much less with electric.

I think, that column was purely thermal. It was a windless night and column would rise for 200-300 yards unaffected. Say, like a hot air from a camp fire.

Only problem I have is, what kept it glowing? There was no radiation to strip electrons and flash photons. Thermal speeds would be very slow, so colisions would not be strong to strip electrons either.

 

[William Strathmann]

I could see this strange diffuse cord of greenish light, maybe about a foot in diameter overall and brightest in the center, reaching straight up into the sky as far as the eye could see. And as I watched, amazed and bewildered by this otherworldly cord of lime green light, I could see that it was very slowly gyrating in place over the enormous distance between the pool and the sky above.

I don't see how a thermal effect a foot in diameter could be maintained for several hundred yards, nor why it would be brightest in the center. But that's me.

Cheers.

 

[DROBNJAK]

I don't see how a thermal effect a foot in diameter could be maintained for several hundred yards, nor why it would be brightest in the center. But that's me.

That's a good point.

But quite frequently one can see "fire tornadoes" coming out of bush fires. There are few of them on YouTube.

Hot air starts rising because its less dense. Initially it is concentrated in a column. Because hot air is moving faster it creates Bernoulli's effect, which further drops pressure inside hot air column. Because hot air is now much less dense than surrounding cold air we have a 'virtual chimney'. 'Virtual Chimney' of hot air would collapse under the pressure of the cold air, if it wasn't for spinning of the hot air column. The spin creates outwards pressure that holds off cold air's inward pressure. 'Virtual Chimney' is now complete and very stable, till it runs out of its fuel, whatever that fuel is.

Thomas's cord was a kind of such hot air column, but much less violent than the one in the video above.

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The real mystery, with Thomas's "cord", is how did it continue glowing green, once it came out of the water? There was no radiation to strip electrons and air molecule collisions were not strong enough to produce the glow.
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Magnetic field gives itself much more to formation of cords and columns, than electric. Various solar flames form loops and are good illustration. If that earth current somehow went in an horizontal loop, under the pool, than that would create magnetic field going straight up at 90º. And if ions are magnetized they would just follow up. Earth currents going in a loops? Very unlikely. But I am reaching limits of my knowledge here.

Anything that is transparent and emitting light will be brighter in the center than on the periphery because there are simply more atoms along the line of sight going through the center, than along the line of sight going through the periphery. Closer to the sides, there would be almost no atoms.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

I don't see how a thermal effect a foot in diameter could be maintained for several hundred yards, nor why it would be brightest in the center. But that's me.

Cheers.

My working hypothesis combines the column of low-pressure upward-flowing ionized particles (essentially "focused" by the higher pressure and lower-temperature air around it), along with the electrostatic attraction between the positively and negatively charged ions (both positively and negatively charged molecules would be created in equal numbers, and a random ion/anion distribution should help them collimate). I'd like to discuss this with a plasma physicist to hear what they'd have to say about it. But I'll start mulling over an experiment: it shouldn't be too hard to simulate the effect on the bench, and I'm gearing up to run some experiments with 500-750 kV charges anyway. This is essentially the same "ghostly glow" phenomenon as St. Elmo's Fire, which causes air molecules to become fluorescent, except in this case the ionized chlorine in the pool may have created the eerie color. Here's a brief description of St. Elmo's Fire (which is too-often confused with static electrical discharges akin to lighting - a different effect):
Physics Buzz: The Ghostly Glow of St. Elmo's Fire

As Dr. Freund mentioned, it can take several minutes for ionized gas molecules to return to an uncharged state. And when they do, they release photons in the visible spectrum. If you consider how far a helium balloon can rise in a few minutes, I think you'll agree that the height could very well be comparable to the length of the cord of light that we observed.

 

[Constance]

Has anyone produced a phenomenon similar to what Thomas saw in a laboratory?

 

[DROBNJAK]

I'd like to discuss this with a plasma physicist to hear what they'd have to say about it.

Check this video, this guy did a simulation based on Maxwell's equations. They call them Birckland's currents. Essentially you get two intertwined spirals, one positive, one negative, going in opposite directions.