《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第129期:匯聚閃電(3)

Lightning rods

避雷針

The mechanism by which lightning rods work is disputed. Some people claim they actually ward off lightning strikes by “bleeding” charge from the ground to the air, lowering the cloud-to-ground voltage potential and reducing the probability of a strike. The National Fire Protection Association does not currently endorse this idea.

避雷針的工作原理一直有爭議，一些人聲稱避雷針其實是通過主動將地面中的電荷釋放到空氣中去，降低雲層與地面之間的電勢差，從而降低閃電發生的機率來避開雷擊。美國消防協會目前並不認可這種說法。

I'm not sure what the NFPA would say about Trevor's massive lightning bolt, but a lightning rod wouldn't protect you from it. A copper cable a meter in diameter could, in theory, conduct the brief surge of current from the bolt without melting. Unfortunately, when the bolt reached the bottom end of the rod, the ground wouldn't conduct it so well, and the explosion of molten rock would demolish your house all the same.5

我不清楚美國消防協會對特雷弗設想的巨大閃電柱作何評論，但光靠避雷針是保護不了你的。一根直徑1米的銅電纜理論上能夠承受住閃電產生的瞬時電涌而不會熔燬，但當閃電沿着銅棒來到底端時，由於地面的導電性能不像銅棒那麼好，熔融岩石產生的爆炸還是會將你家夷平。5

Catatumbo lightning

卡塔通博閃電

Collecting all the world's lightning into one place is obviously impossible. What about gathering all the lightning from just one area?

把全世界的閃電都集中到一個地方顯然是件不可能的事，那如果只是把一個區域的閃電集中到一起呢？

No place on Earth has constant lightning, but there's an area in Venezuela that comes close. Near the southwestern edge of Lake Maracaibo, there's a strange phenomenon: perpetual nighttime thunderstorms. There are two spots, one over the lake and one over land to the west, where thunderstorms form almost every night. These storms can generate a flash of lightning every two seconds, making Lake Maracaibo the lightning capital of the world.

地球上沒有一個地方持續有閃電發生，但委內瑞拉有一個地方閃電極爲頻繁。馬拉開波湖西南角附近有着一種奇怪的現象：永不停息的夜間雷暴。有兩處地方几乎每晚都有雷暴形成，一處是湖的上方，另一處是朝西方向的地面上空。這些雷暴每2秒鐘就能產生一道閃電，使得馬拉開波湖成了世界閃電之都。

If you somehow managed to channel all the bolts from a single night of Catatumbo thunderstorms down through a single lightning rod, and used it to charge a massive capacitor, it would store up enough power to run a game console and plasma TV for roughly a century.6

如果有人設法把一個晚上的卡塔通博雷暴產生的閃電通過一根避雷針傳導下來，並用它來給一個巨大的電容充電，儲存的能量足夠讓遊戲主機加等離子電視工作將近一個世紀。6

Of course, if this happened, the old saying would need even more revision.

當然了，如果你真的這麼幹，那個古老的說法可能需要再修正一下了。

1 Citation: The presentation I gave to my third-grade class at Assawompset Elementary School while wearing a Ben Franklin costume.

1． 來源：我三年級的時候在阿薩旺普塞特小學穿成本•富蘭克林的樣子給同班同學進行的一個演示。

2 And I hear it never strikes in the same place twice.

2． 而且我聽說閃電從不兩次擊中同一個地方。

3 In case you're curious, yes, I did run some numbers on using passing tornadoes to run wind turbines, and it's even less practical than gathering lightning. The average location in the heart of Tornado Alley has a tornado pass over it only every 4000 years. Even if you managed to absorb all the accumulated energy of the tornado, it would still result in less than a watt of average power output in the long run. Believe it or not, something like this idea has actually been attempted. A company called AVEtec has proposed building a “vortex engine” that would produce artificial tornadoes and use them to generate power.

3． 萬一你對此感興趣的話，我確實計算過用經過的龍捲風驅動風力發電機的可能性，得到的結果是它比從閃電中收集電能還不靠譜。龍捲風走廊核心地區平均一個地方每4000年纔會有龍捲風經過，即使你設法收集到了颱風的所有能量，從長期來說發出的平均電力還不到1瓦。不管你信不信，類似的想法真的有人嘗試過。一家叫作AVEtec的公司曾經提出過建造“渦旋引擎”的設想，這種引擎會產生人造龍捲風，並用它們來發電。

4 Niagara Falls has a power output equal to a Hiroshima-sized bomb going off every eight hours! The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki had an explosive power equal to 1.3 Hiroshima bombs! For context, the gentle breeze blowing across a prairie also carries roughly the kinetic energy of a Hiroshima bomb.

4． 尼亞加拉大瀑布的總輸出功率相當於每8個小時引爆一枚投在廣島的原子彈！投在長崎的原子彈的爆炸能量相當於1.3個廣島原子彈！作爲比較，大平原上的微風攜帶的動能也相當於1個廣島原子彈。

5 Your house would already be catching fire anyway, thanks to the thermal radiation from plasma in the air.

5． 反正你家也已經着火了，因爲空中的等離子體放出了大量的熱輻射。

6 Since there's no cellular data coverage on the southwest shore of Lake Maracaibo, you'll have to buy service through a satellite provider, which generally means hundreds of milliseconds of lag.

6． 由於馬拉開波湖西南岸沒有移動數據網絡覆蓋，所以你需要購買衛星運營商的網絡服務，這通常意味着延時會高達幾百毫秒。