JSEverex

I'm looking for a list that would give most to all of naturally occuring gas and liquid molecules: [ce]H2O[/ce], [ce]O2[/ce], [ce]CO2[/ce], [ce]N2[/ce], etc.. I am looking for molecules that occur naturally in one atmosphere of pressure in a relatively temperate enviroment. If anyone has any links to a site or sites that would have something like this it would be greatly appreciated.

Technology? Sort of. For the mass amounts of energy that would be required we're talking superconductive materials, the possibility to store this energy, and the methodology of transporting this energy to ground level. Now after technology you have other things that affect decisions of things like this. Economy, share holders in current energy markets, systematic buying and then repressing of technological patents to increase market outputs of current energy sources, fear of the new, etc.. The best thing I can tell you is that if you think it's something that you can propogate, do the foot work. Don't wait for things to happen, make the first steps yourself.

Okay so I've been reading a bit about the breakdown cascades and see what you're saying about the chain reaction. It also explains why the lightning strike carries so much voltage (as there are many particles of atmosphere being ionized in between the origin of the cascade and the point of contact). I also read that breakdown occurs easier in a vaccum and now have a handy equation for differentials of breakdown occurance in varying atmospheric pressure levels. I also found the theory that links cosmic rays and the seeding of lightning that was initially proposed by Aleksandr Gurevich. I further researched into different ionizing particles (excited alpha, beta and neutrons) and ionizing electromagnetic waves (ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma). The really interesting thing here is that the theory is that lightning is being seeded from cosmic rays, which are as you said excited particles traveling close to the speed of light. It would make sense that gamma, x-rays would not be seeding the lightning because they are negated from the earth's magnetic field. But as I was saying the interesting thing here is the lightning is producing gamma and x-rays in conjunction of the strike through some reaction. I'm wondering if there is more than ionization happening here with all the electrical current passing through the atmosphere. There is a bit of chemistry going on with the production of ozone, I wonder how far off it would be if there was a fission reaction occuring aswell. It doesn't have much bearing on my practical application that I'm cooking up (yet) but it's definetly something to explore. So we know that both excited alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons and shortwave electromagnetic waves can ionize atleast gasses. So potentially we could seed lightning if we wanted to with said sources. Now I have to find the medium between most ionizing and easiest to produce. Now the next thing I have to research is the ionization of different gasses (preferably abundant ones) and how strong each cascade would be in a pure atmosphere of that gas under varying pressures.

I'm not quite sure if I am posting this question in the right forums due to the inclusion of this subject into several different fields: I recently watched a program on either the Science channel or NatGeo that was about lightning. It stated that lightning was not produced solely by the cloud of it's origin but by the combination of the cloud's charged fields and a gamma ray burst coming from space in the form of a cosmic ray. Atleast I'm pretty sure that is what I heard. They said that the cloud itself does not have the required charge to create the initial voltage for the strike, that the gamma rays end up exciting the electrical charges to the point of creating the strike and also creating a byproduct of more gamma rays and xrays aswell. I'm looking for articles about this by so far I've not come up with anything concrete. I have only been able to find he studies that link terrestrial gamma flashes like elves and blue jets to lightning. I believe I might have a practical application of the theories that I can present in a thesis, but I need the initial findings first. If anyone knows any information on the subject or has any links to articles it will be greatly appreciated.