St. Elmo's fire causes. St. Elmo's Fire: a scientific explanation for a mysterious phenomenon

I got on the royal ship. Everywhere there from stem to stern. On deck and in the hold and in the cabins I spread terror; the flame soared on the mast, on the bowsprit and on the yards.

These lines, taken as an epigraph, are not poetic fiction. There are many eyewitness accounts who observed luminous plumes on masts, topmasts, and yards. Ancient sailors called them "St. Elmo's fire."

Two thousand years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca said that during a thunderstorm, “the stars seem to descend from the sky and land on the masts of ships.” He was referring to the discharges in the form of flames that occur not only on the spars of ships, but also on the domes of churches, the tops of towers, spiers and high in the mountains. However, most often “holy lights” are observed in the ocean. Sometimes, when thunderclouds pass over a ship, a glow can be seen on the masts, usually accompanied by a slight crackling sound. In daylight the lights are not visible, but at night they present a spectacular, sometimes eerie picture.

The appearance of the “Elmo lights” was perceived by sailors as a sign announcing the end of the storm and hard work on the ship. One of the legends about Christopher Columbus's voyage to America says: “It seemed that the storm would never subside. Exhausted by hard work, frightened by the flashing lightning and the fierce ocean, the sailors began to grumble. Columbus was blamed for everything, who started this dangerous voyage, which seemed to have no end. Then the Great Navigator ordered everyone to go up on deck and look at the masts. There were bluish lights on their tops. The sailors rejoiced, considering the lights scattered on the masts to be a messenger of Saint Elmo’s mercy to them.”

Magellan's satellites observed with amazement the appearance of lights in the Atlantic Ocean. One of them, the knight Pigafetta, made the following entry in his diary: “During storms, we often saw a glow called the fires of St. Elmo. Somehow, on a dark night, it appeared to us like a kind light. The lights remained at the top of the mainmast for two hours. In the midst of a fierce storm this was a great consolation to us. Before disappearing, the glow flashed so brightly that we were, one might say, stunned. Everyone believed that death would now come. However, at the same moment the wind died down..."

Indeed, strong winds and high waves precede a thunderstorm. But when the storm is overhead and the Elmo Fires come on, the worst is over.

It happens that the glow of the sultans lasts for a long time. Cases have been recorded when a fireball, having descended to the base of the mast, then rolls along the deck. Sometimes lights run across the waves. Homer and Horace wrote about similar phenomena. Then people also considered these lights a happy omen and deified them, calling them by the names of Castor and Pollux - demigods who patronized sailors. English sailors called "St. Elmo's fire" the body of a saint.

"Holy fires" often appeared in large quantities. In 1622, after bad weather, all the galleys of the island of Malta were suddenly illuminated with these lights. They seemed to jump from mast to mast, greeted by triple whistles and exclamations from the sailors.

On June 11, 1686, a French warship, while abeam Madagascar, was subjected to a real attack by “holy fire.” Abbot Chauzy, who was on board the ship, wrote: “A terrible wind was blowing, rain was pouring, lightning was flashing, the whole sea was on fire. Suddenly I saw the lights of “St. Elmo” on all our masts, which descended to the deck. They were the size of a fist, sparkled, jumped and did not burn at all. Everyone smelled sulfur, but there was no thunder. The will-o'-the-wisps behaved on the ship as if they were at home. This continued until dawn."

On December 30, 1902, the ship Moravia was near the Cape Verde Islands. The whole team then witnessed an amazing spectacle. Here is an entry in the ship's log made by Captain A. Simpson: “For a whole hour, lightning flashed in the sky. The steel ropes, the tops of the masts, the ends of the yards and cargo booms - everything glowed. It seemed as if lit lanterns were hung on all the forestays every four feet...” Speaking further about the strange noise accompanying the glow, the captain wrote: “It was as if myriads of cicadas had settled in the rig, or dead wood and dry grass were burning with a crash.”

Modern sailors often observe this interesting phenomenon.

“In July 1960, I participated in the passage of the motor ship Dvina from the port of Providence to the port of Nakhodka,” reports V. Alekseev from the Primorsky Territory, “and between Cape Olyutorsky and the Commander Islands I witnessed a strange, mysterious natural phenomenon. When I started my shift at two o'clock in the morning, the sky was covered with black and purple clouds. We were towed by the steamship Pugachev. After about 30 minutes, I suddenly saw that the contours of its masts, shrouds and superstructure became somehow unusually clearly visible. After a few more minutes, a glow appeared on all the protruding parts of the ship, and luminous tassels appeared on the parts of the masts. Soon, it seemed, the entire surface of the ship was covered with a luminous bluish fringe. I didn't notice any special sounds or smells. "Pugachev" was observed as a continuous luminous spot. All this lasted two and a half hours.”

What are Elmo's lights? What is the reason for such a mysterious natural phenomenon at first glance?

They look like flames, but actually have nothing to do with fire. These are so-called silent discharges of atmospheric electricity, which are most often observed during thunderstorms, snow storms, and squalls.

Fireworks of atmospheric electricity are not always accompanied by thunderstorms. During a thunderstorm, sometimes long before its development, the electric field strength in the atmosphere increases many hundreds and even thousands of times. It is then that a special kind of luminous discharges often appear on the tips and sharp corners of objects rising above the earth's surface. The electric field potential on them can reach such a critical value that is sufficient for electrical breakdown of air. This phenomenon is accompanied by the flow of electrical charges, causing the formation of a luminous “corona”. A similar glow can be observed in fluorescent lamps.

“Elmo's Lights” was first reproduced in the laboratory of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences B.V. Voitsekhovsky. Regarding this phenomenon, Bogdan Vyacheslavovich then expressed his own point of view, different from the generally accepted one: “Like most phenomena associated with atmospheric electricity, “Elmo's lights” occur in clouds - in a mass of charged particles that usually carry a negative charge. In bad weather, clouds can sink very low and with their lower part touch earthly objects: spiers, towers, trees, ship masts. Drops of water with a negative charge meet these positively charged objects, and endless discharges occur, a kind of micro-lightning. They make the spiers and masts glow.”

“Holy lights” create interference and make radio communications difficult. Although they are safe, they should still be avoided as they indicate areas where large charges of atmospheric electricity may be concentrated.

St. Elmo's Fire

Sailors call St. Elmo's Light a bright glow caused by the accumulation of an electrical charge during a thunderstorm, which often appears on the masts and yards of ships. This glow can also be seen around an airplane breaking through a cloud, and sometimes just in high mountain areas when a thundercloud passes over a high peak. This amazing natural phenomenon with an intriguingly romantic name refers to a type of quiet electrical discharges. Under natural conditions, it is observed exclusively at night in the form of luminous tassels, jets, and plumes covering the tips and spiers of tall buildings, the rigging of ships and the tops of other towering objects. For an unprepared person, this is a rather frightening sight - it seems that the surrounding objects are engulfed in some kind of otherworldly flame, and this is often accompanied by a slight dry crackling sound, as if a pile of brushwood is burning. “For a whole hour, lightning flashed in the sky. The steel ropes, the tops of the masts, the knock-yards, the ends of the lifting booms - everything glowed. It seemed as if lighted lamps were hung on all the forestays every four feet, and bright lights shone at the ends of the masts and yardarms. It was as if myriads of cicadas had settled in the rig, or dead wood and dry grass were burning with a crash,” wrote the captain of the Moravia steamship A. Simpson.

Legend associates the appearance of the miraculous glow with Saint Elmo (Erasmus, or Erasmus), the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors, who is said to have died at sea during a strong storm. Before his death, he promised the sailors that he would certainly appear to them in one form or another to inform them whether they were destined to be saved. Soon after this, a strange glow appeared on the mast, which they perceived as the appearance of either the saint himself or a sign sent by him in fulfillment of his promise.

Some other sources associate the origin of the term “St. Elmo’s Lights” with the name of the religious holiday in honor of St. Elmo, when believers saw a luminous top and cross above one of the churches. The quickly spread rumor, inflated by the religious ecstasy of the parishioners, ensured the popularity of this “sign”. The mysterious phenomenon might have been given a different name if believers had known that similar “miracles” had been observed in another place and at another time. So, in Ancient Greece this phenomenon was called “the fires of Castor and Pollux” - after the mythical twin brothers to whom Zeus gave immortality, turning them into the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini.

Historical documents of that time recorded the appearance of the fires of St. Elmo among Greek warriors before decisive sea and land battles, victories in which subsequently glorified Greek weapons. Later, the strange lights began to be called Elena in honor of the sister of the luminous twin brothers. Pliny reports that in his time travelers considered the appearance of double lights a good sign, for then the ship was clearly under the auspices of Gemini; if the fire was single, then it was perceived as a bad sign and an omen of shipwreck. The Christian Greeks had no trouble renaming them the lights of Saint Helena in honor of the pious empress who traveled to the Holy Land in search of the true Cross. In Spain and Portugal they were called "Corpus Santo", implying the incarnation of Saint Elmo. Similar strange lights were documented in the chronicles of Rus'. For example, in the Primary Chronicle, dating back to 1618, one can read the following: “On day I of February, a pillar of fire appeared in the Pechersk Monastery from earth to heaven, and lightning illuminated the whole earth, and thundered in the heavens at the first hour of the night, and the same pillar first a hundred on the stone refectory, as if you did not see the cross, and after standing a little, step onto the church and a hundred over the Feodosev’s tomb.”

It is quite natural that superstitious people mistook the described natural phenomenon for a heavenly “sign”, especially if they saw the glow of church crosses located high above the ground. Cultists used this phenomenon to increase religiosity among believers. And in the Swiss Alps, residents used St. Elmo's lights for a kind of thunderstorm forecast. A spear with a wooden shaft was placed on an elevated place (for example, on the wall of a castle). The castle guard would from time to time bring a halberd to this spear, and if sparks appeared, he would ring the bell, warning the peasants, shepherds and fishermen of the approaching thunderstorm.

But the sailors were especially reverent about this phenomenon. They were overcome with joyful trepidation when, in the midst of low-flying clouds, a glow suddenly appeared at the ends of the masts - a symbol of the fact that Saint Erasmus had taken the ship under his protection. And since miraculous lights usually appear when the peak of the storm is already behind us, the happy “omen” usually came true, and the ship emerged victorious in the battle with the waves. Thus, Christopher Columbus managed to cheer up his discouraged crew by pointing to the sacred lights at the top of the mast as a prediction of the imminent end of their grueling campaign. In the days of sailing, it was considered a lucky omen when fairy lights remained high among the masts, and it was a sign of disaster if the lights came down to the deck. Some sailors believed that this was the soul of a deceased captain or other sea comrade, returning to the ship to warn of a shipwreck or other disaster. It was considered dangerous to come close to the glow or try to touch it, and if it appeared in the form of a halo around someone’s head, it meant imminent death and transition to the world of angels.

Currently, the nature of this beautiful and exciting phenomenon has been unraveled by science. The glow of St. Elmo's lights occurs in an electrified atmosphere, when the electric field strength in the atmosphere at the tip reaches about 500 V/m and higher. This glow discharge is similar to the lights of neon advertisements and is caused by the flow of electrical charge from the sharp ends of various kinds of objects. As you know, all bodies consist of positively and negatively charged particles. These particles are attracted to each other, and if they are separated, they strive in every possible way to connect again. When negatively or positively charged particles accumulate at the base of a cloud, they contribute to the appearance of an opposite charge on the surface of the earth. Streams of charged particles form between the ground and the clouds, and when they begin to move at high speed, bright flashes of lightning appear in the sky. If the charges do not have the opportunity to accumulate before the desired discharge occurs, since they have “leaked” somewhere, then lightning cannot form. It is on this principle that lightning rods work - the top of the lightning rod promotes the “leakage” of electrons and prevents lightning flashes. Thus, St. Elmo's fire is a natural glow that accompanies atmospheric electrical "leakage" of charges.

St. Elmo's Fire can sometimes be seen in winter during snowstorms or dry weather with dusty winds (such as sandstorms). In this case, a necessary condition for the appearance of a glow is the presence in dry air of solid dielectric particles of sand, dust or snow carried by the wind. During mutual friction, the “aerosol” particles become electrified, which leads to a local increase in the electric field strength and causes the appearance of electrical discharges. Sometimes these lights, crowning the cows grazing in the valleys of the foothills, turn them into unprecedented supernatural monsters.

There is evidence that a mysterious glow also occurs during volcanic eruptions, when the air is saturated with volcanic ash and particles of ejected rock.

But most often the phenomenon of wonderful lights is observed in the mountains, and the phenomenon reaches its maximum when the base of the cloud almost touches the ground. It is possible that the burning and unburnt bush, in the form of which God talked with Moses on Mount Sinai, was nothing more than the fires of St. Elmo. It is believed that the glow is brighter and reddish when the thundercloud at its lower boundary has a negative charge. And if the lower part of the cloud is positively charged, the glow is weaker and has a bluish tint, which is much less common.

However, for ship radio operators, St. Elmo's lights create special difficulties, strongly electrifying the radio antenna. Sometimes this luminous phenomenon can be seen on airplanes, where the propellers and various pointed parts of the body are crowned with lights. But the appearance of this phenomenon does not please pilots at all due to strong static interference.

To eliminate the negative effect, special arresters are installed on airplanes in the form of metal whisks, fixed at a certain distance from each other. These dischargers prevent a large charge from accumulating on the body, and the resulting charge is gradually “expressed” into the atmosphere.

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Lights in the twilight sky PETROZAVODSK, SEPTEMBER 2, 1977 Just before dawn, a bright star flashed above the horizon. The sky was cut through, it rose rather slowly, pulsating with a sparkling reddish sung. Then she smoothly turned to the left, marking an arc, and

The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, dividing fire into two types - earthly and heavenly, argued that during a thunderstorm “the stars seem to descend from the sky and land on the masts of ships.” But the main difference between heavenly fire and earthly fire is that it does not burn or ignite objects and cannot be extinguished with water.

Cohorts of Roman legionnaires, setting up a night bivouac, stuck their spears into the ground, surrounding the camp with a kind of fence. When the weather foreshadowed a night thunderstorm, blue tassels of “heavenly fire” were often lit on the tips of the spears. This was a good sign from heaven: since ancient times, such a glow was called the fires of the Dioscuri, who were considered the heavenly patrons of warriors and sailors.

2000 years later, in the more enlightened 17th-18th centuries, this phenomenon was adapted to warn of a thunderstorm. In many European castles, a spear was installed on a dais. Since the fire of the Dioscuri was not visible during the day, the guard regularly brought a halberd to the tip of the spear: if sparks jumped between them, he should immediately ring the bell, warning of an approaching thunderstorm. Naturally, at this time the phenomenon was no longer called by a pagan name, and since most often such a glow appeared on the spiers and crosses of churches, many local names appeared: the lights of Saints Nicholas, Claudius, Helen and, finally, Saint Elmo.

Depending on where the “heavenly fire” appears, it can take different forms: a uniform glow, individual flickering lights, tassels or torches. Sometimes it resembles an earthly flame so much that they have tried to extinguish it. There were other oddities.

In 1695, a sailing ship was caught in a thunderstorm in the Mediterranean Sea. Fearing a storm, the captain ordered the sails to be lowered. And immediately over 30 St. Elmo’s lights appeared on different parts of the ship’s spar. On the weathervane of the mainmast the fire reached half a meter in height. The captain, apparently having previously taken a pint of rum, sent a sailor up the mast to remove the fire. Having gone upstairs, he shouted that the fire was hissing like an angry cat and did not want to be removed. Then the captain ordered it to be removed along with the weather vane. But as soon as the sailor touched the weather vane, the fire jumped to the end of the mast, from where it was impossible to remove it.
A little earlier, on June 11, 1686, “Saint Elmo” descended on a French warship. Abbot Chauzy, who was on board, left his descendants with personal impressions of his meeting with him. “A terrible wind blew,” the abbot wrote, “it rained, lightning flashed, the whole sea was on fire. Suddenly I saw St. Elmo's lights on all our masts, which descended to the deck. They were the size of a fist, glowed brightly, jumped and did not burn at all. Everyone smelled sulfur. Will-o'-the-wisps felt right at home on the ship. This continued until dawn."

On December 30, 1902, the ship Moravia was near the Cape Verde Islands. Captain Simpson, having taken up his watch, made a personal note in the ship's log: “For a whole hour, lightning flashed in the sky. Steel ropes, the tops of masts, the ends of yards and cargo booms - everything glowed. It seemed as if lighted lanterns were hung on all the forestays every four feet. The glow was accompanied by a strange noise: as if myriads of cicadas had settled in the equipment, or dead wood and dry grass were burning with a crackling sound.”

St. Elmo's lights also appear on aircraft. Navigator A.G. Zaitsev left the following note about his observation: “It was in the summer of 1952 over Ukraine. As we descended we passed through thunderclouds. It got dark overboard, as if it was twilight. Suddenly we saw light blue flames twenty centimeters high dancing along the leading edge of the wing. There were so many of them that the wing seemed to be burning along the entire rib. About three minutes later the lights disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.”

The “heavenly fire” is also observed by specialists who are required to do so by their line of work. In June 1975, employees of the Astrakhan Hydrometeorological Observatory were returning from work in the north of the Caspian Sea. “In complete darkness, we got out of the reed thickets and walked through the shallow water to a motor boat left two kilometers from the shore,” N.D. Gershtansky, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences, later wrote. – Somewhere in the north lightning flashed. Suddenly, all of our hair began to glow with phosphorescent light. Tongues of cold flame appeared near the fingers of the raised hands. When we lifted the measuring stick, the top lit up so brightly that the manufacturer's tag could be read. All this lasted about ten minutes. Interestingly, the glow did not appear below a meter above the water surface.”

But St. Elmo's lights don't only appear before a thunderstorm. In the summer of 1958, employees of the Institute of Geography carried out meteorological measurements under the International Geophysical Year program on a glacier in the Trans-Ili Alatau at an altitude of 4000 meters. On June 23, a snowstorm began and it became colder. On the night of June 26, meteorologists leaving the house saw an amazing picture: blue tongues of cold flame appeared on weather instruments, antennas, and icicles on the roof of the house. It also appeared on the fingers of raised hands. On the precipitation gauge, the flame height reached 10 centimeters. One of the employees decided to touch the flame on the hook of the gradient rod with a pencil. At the same moment, lightning struck the bar. People were blinded and knocked off their feet. When they got up, the fire disappeared, but a quarter of an hour later it appeared in its original place.

In the south of the Tver region there is the Rodnya mound. Its top is overgrown with coniferous forest, and local residents try not to go there, since the mound has a bad reputation. In the summer of 1991, a group of tourists camping nearby for the night observed a strange phenomenon: in pre-storm weather, blue lights began to light up one after another above the trees at the top of the mound. When the tourists climbed the hill the next day, they accidentally discovered that some trees were equipped with “lightning rods” in the form of copper wire wrapped around the trunks. Apparently, there were jokers who wanted to somehow take advantage of the hill’s notoriety.

The nature of St. Elmo's fire is undoubtedly associated with electrical processes in the atmosphere. In good weather, the electric field strength at the ground is 100-120 V/m, that is, between the fingers of a raised hand and the ground it will reach approximately 220 volts. Unfortunately, at a very scanty current. Before a thunderstorm, this field strength increases to several thousand V/m, and this is already enough to cause a corona discharge. The same effect can be observed in snow and sand storms and volcanic clouds.

St. Elmo's Fire is one of the ten most interesting light phenomena along with rainbows, mirages, rings of light, aurora and others.

St. Elmo's Fire is an electrical phenomenon that is most often seen during thunderstorms. Negatively or positively charged particles accumulate in a cloud during a thunderstorm, which leads to the appearance of an opposite charge on the surface of the earth. The earth and clouds thus become connected by a common electric field; streams of charged particles that move at high speed pass through this space. When a sufficiently large charge accumulates, a phenomenon called lightning occurs.

If there is not enough charge for lightning to occur, then if it does not have time to accumulate, since part of the charge goes to another place, then lightning will not form. Nowadays, this is exactly what lightning rods are used for - the end of the lightning rod draws charges towards itself, preventing lightning from forming.

So, when such natural charge removal, energy leakage, occurs, a phenomenon called “St. Elmo’s Fire” occurs - a spherical or other shaped glow that appears during a thunderstorm and storm at the ends of tall sharp objects, for example, on a lightning rod, the top of a cathedral, a sharp weather vane or the end of a ship's mast. This phenomenon is usually accompanied by a quiet whistle, hissing or barely audible crackling sound.

Most is known about the attitude of sailors to this phenomenon. Thunderstorms and storms at sea are a terrible and very undesirable phenomenon, dressed in the mantle of a bunch of beliefs and signs. The sailors believed that these were the lights of St. Elmo - a message from the god of sailors - St. Elmo, who took the ship under his protection. It was believed that the appearance of these lights was good luck; the sailors believed that if these lights appeared at the ends of the ship's masts, the ship would definitely return to its native harbor.

Sometimes in thundery weather you can observe an interesting natural phenomenon: a bright glow appears on the tops of spiers, towers and even the trunks of individual trees. This interesting phenomenon has long been known to sailors. The ancient Romans called it the fires of Pollux and Castor (mythological twins). When there is a thunderstorm at sea, such lights usually appear not at the tops of the masts. The historian of Ancient Rome Lucius Seneca wrote on this occasion: “It seems that the stars are descending from the sky and landing on the masts of ships.”

In Medieval Europe, lights on masts began to be associated with the name of St. Elmo. In the Christian tradition, he was considered the patron saint of sailors. Here is what sailors wrote in the 17th century about the mysterious lights: “A thunderstorm began and a fire appeared on the weather vane of the large mast, reaching a height of 1.5 meters. The captain ordered the sailor to extinguish it. He climbed up and shouted that the fire was hissing like raw gunpowder. They shouted to the sailor to take it down along with the weather vane and bring it down, but the fire jumped to the end of the mast, and it became impossible to reach it.”

St. Elmo's Fire can be seen not only at sea. American farmers have repeatedly told how the horns of cows on their ranch glowed during a thunderstorm. An unprepared person may associate this phenomenon with something supernatural.

How St. Elmo's Fire is created

Modern physics knows almost everything about St. Elmo's fire. These are electrical corona discharges, and the essence of this phenomenon is explained quite simply: any gas has a certain number of charged particles or ions. They arise due to the removal of electrons from atoms. The number of such ions under normal conditions is negligible, so the gas does not conduct electricity. But during a thunderstorm, the intensity of the electromagnetic field increases sharply.

As a result, gas ions begin to move more intensely, as they receive additional energy. They begin to bombard neutral gas molecules, and they break up into positively and negatively charged particles. This process is called impact ionization. It proceeds like an avalanche, and as a result, the gas acquires the ability to conduct electricity.

This phenomenon was first studied by the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla. He proved that in an alternating electromagnetic field the tension is more intense around sharp protrusions of buildings and objects. It is in such places that areas of ionized gas appear. Outwardly they look like crowns. This is where the name came from - corona discharge.

The effect of impact ionization is used in Geiger counters, that is, it is used to measure the level of radiation. And corona discharges obediently serve people in laser printers and copiers.

St. Elmo's Fire is directly related to the attempt to photograph a person's aura. What is an aura? These are the seven energy layers surrounding the human body. The first is associated with pleasure and the sensation of pain, the second with emotions, the third with thinking. The fourth is associated with the energy of love, the fifth with the human will, the sixth with the manifestation of divine love, and the seventh with the higher mind.

Official science denies the aura. However, there are people who offer to photograph the aura and determine possible health problems from the image. The possibility of photographing the aura was discussed as a result of the research of the Kirlian spouses. They created a kind of laboratory at home, where they used a resonant transformer as a high-voltage voltage source.

At first, we were talking only about photographic recording of corona discharges. However, soon everyone was talking about Kirlian effect. They said that the luminosity of the tips of human fingers increases noticeably after reading a prayer. They also wrote that if you cut off the tip of a sheet of paper and photograph the cut sheet using the Kirlian method, then a luminous, undamaged sheet will be reflected in the photograph.

As for science, it was indifferent to this effect. Physicists have stated that such an effect does not exist in nature. They motivated this by the fact that when a high-frequency field is repeatedly exposed to, say, human skin, its electrical conductivity increases. This happens due to the release of sweat, which contains ions necessary for electrical conductivity. That's the whole effect.

Kirlian effect, photo No. 1 (left) and photo No. 2

This makes it clear why the repeated shot of the glow turns out brighter. After the first photograph, we tried not to read prayers, but to utter abusive expressions. The second photo still turned out brighter, as if good words were being spoken.

If we talk about the glow of the entire sheet after cutting off part of it, then the experts figured this out very quickly. It turned out that the sheet was placed on the same substrate that was there before. And it contained those substances that the leaf managed to release during the first study. As soon as you wiped the substrate with alcohol or placed a clean sheet of paper on it, the effect disappeared.

What about a person’s aura? Does she exist or not? It depends on what you mean by this term. Human skin secretes a wide variety of substances. The electrical conductivity of the skin of a healthy and sick person differs markedly. Almost every protein molecule that is part of the cells of living organisms carries positive and negative charges on its surface. Consequently, any organism creates a weak electric field. This aura is very real.

Ancient artists decorated the heads of saints on icons with halos. They were considered a symbolic image of holiness. It is difficult to object to anything here, since a person who has devoted himself to godly deeds truly seems to glow from within.

On the other hand, everyone can see a halo around their head. To do this, you need to stand early in the morning on the dewy grass with your back to the sun and look at the shadow of your head. There will be a slight glow around it. This is not a sign of holiness at all, but only the optical effect of reflection of the sun's rays from dew drops.

Hello, dear readers of the Sprint-Response website. Today on Channel One there is a TV game called “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” In this article we will look at a very interesting question about St. Elmo's Fire. The players thought for a very long time, or rather spent time answering. The players talked more about abstract topics, for example about the place of birth and study of Yana Koshkina, who played today with Andrei Kozlov.

Where do St. Elmo's Fires often appear?

The correct answer is traditionally highlighted in blue and bold.

Saint Elmo's fire or Saint Elmo's light (English: Saint Elmo's fire, Saint Elmo's light) - a discharge in the form of luminous beams or tassels (or a crown discharge) that occurs at the sharp ends of tall objects (towers, masts, lonely trees , sharp tops of rocks, etc.) at high electric field strength in the atmosphere. They are formed at moments when the electric field strength in the atmosphere at the tip reaches a value of the order of 500 V/m and higher, which most often happens during a thunderstorm or as it approaches, and in winter during blizzards.

on the stalactites of caves
on ship masts
at the bottom of the Mariana Trench
on the surface of the moon

The upper branches of trees, the spiers of towers, the tops of masts at sea and other similar places are sometimes illuminated with a flickering bluish glow. It can look different: like an even flickering glow in the form of a crown or halo, like dancing flames, like fireworks scattering sparks.

It’s good that Andrey knew the correct answer to the question, so the answer turned out to be correct: on ship masts.