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Clouds and Volcanos

Volcanos have two notable features that suggest they are electrical in nature. Both features relate to the ash cloud generated by the volcano.

A striking thing about volcanos is the lightning that accompany violent eruptions. When the La Palma volcano blew out its side a few days ago, there were so many lightning flashes that Reuters felt a need to include the standard explanation for this in their news article.

Rinjani 1994.jpg
Violent volcanic eruption
By Oliver Spalt, CC BY 2.0, Link

According to standard theory, lightning comes about through air friction. Clouds build up charge in much the same way party balloons build up charge when we rub them against our hair. When sufficient charge is built up, we get a discharge in the form of a lightning bolt.

However, there’s an electric gradient inherent in our environment. Earth is more heavily charged than the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is more heavily charged closer to ground than higher up. It follows from this that a large cloud of volcanic dust, tossed high up in the air, will be in electric imbalance with its environment. That imbalance, when sufficiently great, will naturally lead to lightning, so there’s no need to introduce the notion of air friction.

Another thing to note is how volcanic ash clouds tend to hover, sometimes far above regular clouds. They find equilibrium in the atmosphere. The dust can linger there for days and weeks on end. Winds sometimes move these clouds hundreds of miles before the dust falls down to earth. There’s no simple explanation for this in conventional theory. However, an electric model explains this easily.

Ile Barren, 1995.jpg
Volcanic ash cloud
By NASA – https://archive.org/details/STS067-721A-052, Public Domain, Link

Dr. Gerald Pollack contends that cloud layers are related to charge density. The more heavily charged a cloud is, the higher up it will be found. Furthermore, charge density is evenly distributed within clouds once they have completed their formation. That’s why stratospheric clouds are flat, while newly formed clouds are bubbly and full of turbulence.

Taking a look at a volcano from afar, we see that there’s a column of turbulent ash emitted by the volcano, and that this column changes into a flat layer as it ages. When the ash has cooled down, and distributed its charge within itself, it hovers high up in the air due to its high charge density.

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