Sprite streams

[fredrick01]

Scary monsters and nice sprites.

[mom08102001]

vsauce bouth me here

[SuperBoatznhoez]

Where does this occur?

[ignasmixer]

i turned on youtube snowflake to be funnier .

[popcornalice]

For a second there I thought 2206411411 was the number of uploader comments.

[Luigi4911]

Nice sprites!

[IAlwaysCommentAVid]

YES OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

[myth1032]

i though this was a soft drink add.......

[1l0vepanda]

i m sorry, but my english isnt perfect, and i am not that smart, could somebody explain 2 me where that is coming from? thank you!

[kappajump1]

7 ppl who disliked can't play 9D chess

only 3D candy land

[Myoosikz]

Last vid's an hour, this one's 21 seconds. XD

[Feardragon115]

he could of just made the last one at least a minute not effin a hour!

[danjoelabrenica]

wow i see everyone here is from the leanback #5

[naveenraj8d]

v sauce is the man!

[TheHNajjar]

so cool



[JBTheMovies]

waiting for the day someone films a sprite in high speed HD

[Keilyvip]

So... that´s what we´ve all been drinking...

[NET1340]

10k fps? sounds good

[AppleCosplay]

The only sprites I know of are videogame sprites |D

[LiteraryInquisition]

i dont understand

[nicevidugotthere]

lol 10,000 fps?!?!? lmao

[shadowsgrl36048]

lol,gotta love leanback!

[tk7kyle]

Wish I could get 10,000 fps on all the games I play..

[sheiksubra]

so the earth is like a pixel in an 8 bit videogame? :O

[bvabhi]

Why does this video is not available in europe

[oliviretti]

why are all the beautiful stuff hapening where I can't see them??!!!

[HancockAndLuffy]

I wish I understood how this all works. It looks so cool! I might have to waste a few Friday nights and a few 12-packs of Mountain Dew while searching wikis and random sites after seeing this video...

[THEROTATINGFOOT]

but did you see the gorilla?

[patachu666]

fucking sprites and storm jets, i hate these things.

[UndeadKIRA]

i already knew about this before leanback

feel so proud

[nikie350]

wat 4 stupid ppl disliked this?!

also like if vsauce brought u here

[2206411411]

@nikie350 There's 246 who liked it out of 250 who voted. For a 21 second clip that's quite old (technology advances fast these days) on a site that has a lot of science videos, that's not a bad percentage at all.

[AceDanger420]

This is the most spectacular film of Sprites I have ever seen!

[poliboy55]

I'm pretty sure lightning travels upward and downward depending on the charges.

[2206411411]

@poliboy55 Lightning, perhaps, but sprites aren't technically lightning. What is termed lightning is a simple static discharge between the cloud and either another cloud and the ground. Above-cloud effects like sprites aren't so simple. The upper atmosphere is a sea of ionised particles (and occasionally plasmas). The energies are much greater there as it's charged not by friction but by cosmic rays and solar storms. The direction won't change with the type of storm.

[poliboy55]

@2206411411 Yeah I was sort of referring to an earlier comment that said lightning travels upward so they thought it was fake.

[TheOriginalTwichty]

its so perty-ful!

[dsandi100]

Love the name of the uploader

[2206411411]

@dsandi100 So far, nobody has been able to guess where the username comes from. I'm actually quite shocked by that.

[ShowSStopper]

@2206411411 is that a phone number? xd

[thelegendaryblah]

@2206411411

vsauce told us about it from IMG

[EpicDrawer5000]

@2206411411 what does your username mean??

[2206411411]

@EpicDrawer5000 It's taken a few years, but someone finally asked! :) It's the old-style (X25) Internet address of the world's first MMORG, which I used to enjoy back in the 80s.

[mattfrank7]

@2206411411 What was that MMORPG called?

[geniusjas87]

I don't get it........

[Mister86Productions]

COVENANT ARE ATTACKING!

[origamishishou]

i wonder why it spreads out so far.

[Xhai221]

This us easily the worst video. 

[Sandbox37]

they kinda look like fireworks

[LadyMissCoppertone]

What an amazing light show.

[ThePredator1256]

scary monsters and nice sprites

[123themysteryman789]

PK Starstorm? anyone

[biorez1]

KIIID STAARSTOORM

[testoftetris]

but did you see the gorilla?

[biskuat]

Thats no sprite. Thats just Goku throwing a rampage

[Tom31994]

kaaaaaaa-meeeee.Haaaaaaa-meeee­.HAAAA!!!!

[blueseeker93]

@Tom31994 Multiple kamehameha..

[tonib1407]

its' alive !

[x2epiczx2]

10000 frames per second i need 1 of those

[Blindar]

I have no idea what the fuck just happened. But it was awesome. - Lean back.

[TheMHMproductions]

((oo))___((OO))!!??

[GoldenGangsta666]

Hmmm sprite

[SwordGun33]

Uhhh.... all the uploader comments are a bit too smart for me... to me it just looked like a missile strike of some sort....lol.

[gertuberger]

0:05 is that thing showing me its middle-finger?

[blugtar87]

I do not understand what I just looked at other than that this occurs in the metasphere lol

[blugtar87]

@blugtar87 i meant mesosphere :P lol

[sxyphatboy]

cool

[LolFishFail]

Can't people harness this energy! it's almost unlimited and would probably cure the world's energy needs.

[LenkeH]

pretty impresing stuff :D

[Mrlolerious]

how did you film this?

[edisonlai123]

I wonder wat happens when you touch it... will it hurt?

[awesomelightning]

@edisonlai123 NO I AM PRETTY SURE TOUCHING A FEW MILLION VOLTS AND A FEW THOUSAND AMPERES WILL NOT HURT... -_-

[ilovetogofast88]

Nature provides us with the greatest fireworks show ever!

[p1lotp3n]

if i happen to be there with iron man clothes and suddenly a red sprite happen just above me will it kills? note: no some sort of magnetic field protection like in xmen

[izlude2]

those things are super tall wow

[aman11022]

why does look like it is coming from up to down?

I thought the the electrons are transferring from the ground to the clouds.

[2206411411]

@aman11022 Sprites occur above the clouds. What is happening in this video is a cascading effect of some kind, as there is clearly a movement from the cloud to the upper atmosphere, followed by a massive burst down. You would need to look into the physics as currently understood, but the burst up is clearly closing a circuit that allows the subsequent migration down.

[shkwave99]

@2206411411 I think you are correct, and that is how action potential develops between the cloud and ground. A channel of ionized air opens up from ground to cloud, enabling the current to go to ground through that channel. I am not an expert in this by any means. I study literature.

[Keira2694]

@aman11022 Lightning in some cases goes upward as well.. From the ground to the clouds. Try to google or youtube this, I'm sure you'd find many videos relating to this.

[horser423]

@ wxchaser03- Could this happen on a smaller scale? For example, a specialized electrical organ of freshwater fish?

[2206411411]

@horser423 Sprites per-se won't occur in fish - not unless you know of a fish that can generate thunderstorms and has an internal ionosphere. However, the brain and nervous system in any animal is going to have some sort of cascading effect - what you sense is totally disproportionate to the energy imparted to the nerve endings. In the limited sense of a tiny trigger releasing a lot of energy, then, yes. It'll happen all the time.

[horser423]

@ wxchaser03- Could this happen on a smaller scale? For example, a specialized electrical organ of freshwater fish?

[GTAxxxCHEATER]

ITS AN ALIEN INVASION IM just kiddin

[2206411411]

@GTAxxxCHEATER If you include ionized particles of an extra-terrestrial origin in your definition of "alien", and particles that are not part of any simple exchange mechanism as "invading", then the upper atmosphere (and therefore this Sprite) will be clogged with alien invaders. So, yes, you are correct.

[brammemans10]

there are more of those strange lighting phenomens like: 'elves' and 'blue jets' and those sprites are also one of them

[Eastview605]

@brammemans10 The video clip is actually of a sprite, recorded at ultra-high speed.

[laura20022004]

i learned about this.

[awesomelightning]

wow. Neat sprites. What satellite did they take that from?

[Eastview605]

@awesomelightning Not from satellite. From the top of Mt. Baldy, New Mexico, SW from Socorro.

[awesomelightning]

@Eastview605 that's a tall mtn. Hey is your profile pic of Nikolas Tesla?

[Eastview605]

@awesomelightning Yes, the photo is of NIkola Tesla, probably taken ca 1890.

[awesomelightning]

@Eastview605 When were cameras invented O.O

[Eastview605]

@awesomelightning If you mean the high speed (10 kfps) camera used to capture these images, they have been around for more than ten years and are commercially available but kind of pricey (ca $30K). The highest speed cameras being used these days are on the order of 300 kfps.

[awesomelightning]

@Eastview605 Actual cameras. The first ones. But, wow... I think I will wait until I graduate from high school and college and get a job

[laura20022004]

That's is just crazy and awesome

[holycrapapie]

Ohh, magic sky-soda!

[leofer1976]

Wow!!! No words!!!!

[holycrapapie]

What exactly is a sprite?

[greatplanesman]

From what I got off the discovery channel tonight: A Sprite is a discharge of electrical energy above a lightning strike.

[holycrapapie]

That....

Is awesome!

[okuma0kuma]

visual at full speed the sprite lightning go upward about 20 - 25 miles before dissolving ,human eye sight visual colour they always have red upper tint and blue lighting lower region ,in this slow motion vid it seems sprites match the red shift theory but if you see one they appear to go opposite direction ,they should re-nick name them microbial asteroids haha

[Eastview605]

This same clip is also on the YouTube site maintained by Eastview605, the original creator of this clip.

[FastKart27]

what are sprites

[anonymousstormchaser]

a sprite is lightnning that happends thousands of feet above thunderstorms in the upper atmosphere.

[MonoTheLuke]

amazing!

[JayZoop]

I wonder if somehow we could use electricity to remove all the toxins in the air.

[ActiveStorage]

and i wonder if we could tap into those energy sourses lol. i know nasa developed a nice new way to de-orbit their old satellites. they drop a 5 km long wire down and allow it to accumulate some electric charge from ionosphere, all these charged particles create drag due to earth's electromagnetic field (or better say magnetic field creates drag on charged particles?) and end up de-orbiting a satellite.

[ActiveStorage]

to compare the effectiveness and the amount of charge accumulated.. without such wire the de-orbiting from high-altitude orbit by naturally ocuring drag in space "vacuum" environment would take 100-200 years and with the wire dropping down from the satellite it would take around 60 days :)

[Eastview605]

There's not much energy in a typical large scale sprite such as shown in this clip. The total energy has been estimated to be not more than a few MJ (mega-joules), equivalent to the caloric energy in a few dozen jelly donuts.

[ActiveStorage]

or a kinetic energy of a 1 tone vehicle doing around 180 km per hour ;)

i agree. very small value but i was thinking about global electromagnetic circuits out there. Not about a single sprite

[Kenzofeis]

Well it takes a lot of energy to walk around with a fat belt and a nightstick

[Jacdagirl94414]

wt exactly r they?!

[2206411411]

Sprites are a strange, poorly-understood plasma that blasts upwards from thunderclouds to the very top of the atmosphere. They are probably something to do with the fact that the upper atmosphere is highly charged and that the upper layers of a thundercloud hold the opposite charge to that on the lower layers. They don't always occur, however, and if they were that simple they'd be not nearly so mysterious to atmospheric physics.

[wxchaser03]

sprites are the upper-atmosphere's reaction to very powerful positive lightning discharges that lower large amounts of charge in very quick timescales (can be on the order of 1500 C/km) That charge movement creates a magnetic fields that allows for upper-atmospheric breakdown.

[ActiveStorage]

whats "upper-atmospheric breakdown"?

[wxchaser03]

when a electric field is strong enough to allow electrons to flow down, that is commonly referred to as breakdown.

[Eastview605]

Right, plus sprites are actually pretty well understood these days. They are not plasma that blasts upward from thunderstorms. Rather, they are discharges that start at high altitude (look at the scale) above a thunderstorm, and then progress downward, as can be seen in this clip.

[ActiveStorage]

plasma means "an area with some amount of free flowing charged particles in it"

electric discharge is a plasma phenomena so one can say that a sprite is in fact a form of plasma.

[Eastview605]

Sprites are, indeed, weakly ionized plasma (fractional ionization ~1e-9). But to characterize them as blasting upward from thunderstorms is incorrect. The breakdown starts in the upper atmosphere, not in the clouds, and then proceeds downward, not upward.

[ActiveStorage]

oh sorry. i thought u was arguing that sprites have nothing to do with plasma phenomena lol

and what are the ones that go upwards? im pretty sure there is a different type of such atmospheric phenomena and they transfer energy into the stratosphere\ionosphere of our planet

[2206411411]

@wxchaser03 - That is an excellent explanation and probably the right one, but there are many other explanations out there (such as cosmic rays ionizing the upper atmosphere and clouds, and since the upper atmosphere is ionized, a discharge upwards eventually becomes inevitable). Part of the problem is that atmospheric research is expensive, NASA cut back on such research to help fund their moon rocket due to a very limited budget and inter-disciplinary projects tend to get entangled in politics

[wxchaser03]

Thanks. Ive been involved with a decent amount of sprite research and there are pretty good correlations from National Lightning Detection network and the recently developed impulse Charge Moment Change network on the 'parent' lightning. Also, currently a multi-faceted project in the works (hopefully deployed this summer) to capture the parent lightning on high speed cameras, while a Lightning Mapping Array creates a three dimensional picture of the bolt as well as the charge structure.

[wxchaser03]

@2206411411

The concept of the cosmic rays might very well play a role in 'priming' the atmosphere for sprites and could lower the threshold needed for TLE generation but the main trigger is most likely the parent flash and the associated charge movement disruption the vertical magnetic fields initiated electron avalanching.

[2206411411]

@wxchaser03 I'll take your explanations and descriptions over those of some of the other responders, because you have taken the time to explain the reasoning and educate/inform those of us less knowledgeable - a highly commendable (but sadly all-too-rare) quality.

[wxchaser03]

@2206411411

well I have some experince and unfortuneately most people relate opinion or wikipedia as experience. There are lots of misconceptions in the world; cant help it.

I do love this video though!!

[Eastview605]

@wxchaser03 Right idea, except it's the electric field, not the magnetic field, that produces the breakdown. (Maybe this sounds like nit picking, but it's not. The underlying physics is different for electric and magnetic effects on electrons.)

[edliedragon666]

@2206411411 I agree, That also goes for blue jets. it would be fascinating if elves where visible to the naked eye during a thunder storm what i do not get is elves are so massive but they happen so fast why is that??

[2206411411]

@edliedragon666 - The big problem is nobody really understands sprites. The theories on what sprites are sound (to me) suspiciously like the guesses in the 1700s as to what caused thunder and lightning - logical and rational-sounding but based on too little knowledge. Current theory talks of cosmic rays being responsible for sprites and lightning in general, but complex explanations are usually wrong. Sprites are fast because plasma is both fast and short-lived, but that is what happens, not why

[Eastview605]

@2206411411 Actually, most of the fundamental mechanisms of sprites, jets, elves, etc., have been identified at the microphysical level (microphysical in the physics sense, not in the sense atmospheric scientists use the term). What's not understood yet is the role played by energetic processes (x-rays, photonuclear, some radiative transfer issues, etc.) The macrophysics isn't yet completely worked out, but of necessity it can't be until the microphysics is completely understood.

[ActiveStorage]

i think the global weather system on earth is caused by all these weird and unstudied electrical phenomena like discharges between upper and lower atmospheres and ground. i mean cyclones and anticyclones, thunderstorms, hurricanes.. stuff like that. oh well what do i know )

[wxchaser03]

most definitely a large role of the global electrical circuit is played by TLE's. not sure they play into effect with synoptic scale weather patterns but everything in nature is connected by some small amount.

[eple0]

they're so beautiful...

[tankedline]

amazing,i wna hear one!

[wxchaser03]

probably little to no sound. if you want to hear what their radio waves sound like. get a ultra low frequency detector and wire it to a speaker. lightning makes a sound like bacon popping in that range. kinda cool listening to a large mesoscale convective system 1000 miles away.

[OscarLimaIndia]

Beautufull and horrific! One of the most impressive atmospheric phaenomens at all. In a Science TV magazine they made the infrasonic sound of a sprite's thunder hearable. Once again: HORRIFIC! ;)

[wxchaser03]

ya you can listen to thunder by getting a reciever that listens to Very Low Frequency VLF. It is pretty impressive to listen to MCS's 1000 KM away putting out 40,000 strokes/hour. sounds like bacon sizzling

[ZionHillCalling]

@OscarLimaIndia The sound reminded me of dolphins =)

[wxchaser03]

wonderful video. finally some scientific videos about sprites.