《那些古怪又让人忧心的问题》第129期:汇聚闪电(3)

Lightning rods

避雷针

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.

避雷针的工作原理一直有争议，一些人声称避雷针其实是通过主动将地面中的电荷释放到空气中去，降低云层与地面之间的电势差，从而降低闪电发生的几率来避开雷击。美国消防协会目前并不认可这种说法。

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

我不清楚美国消防协会对特雷弗设想的巨大闪电柱作何评论，但光靠避雷针是保护不了你的。一根直径1米的铜电缆理论上能够承受住闪电产生的瞬时电涌而不会熔毁，但当闪电沿着铜棒来到底端时，由于地面的导电性能不像铜棒那么好，熔融岩石产生的爆炸还是会将你家夷平。5

Catatumbo lightning

卡塔通博闪电

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

把全世界的闪电都集中到一个地方显然是件不可能的事，那如果只是把一个区域的闪电集中到一起呢？

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.

地球上没有一个地方持续有闪电发生，但委内瑞拉有一个地方闪电极为频繁。马拉开波湖西南角附近有着一种奇怪的现象：永不停息的夜间雷暴。有两处地方几乎每晚都有雷暴形成，一处是湖的上方，另一处是朝西方向的地面上空。这些雷暴每2秒钟就能产生一道闪电，使得马拉开波湖成了世界闪电之都。

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

如果有人设法把一个晚上的卡塔通博雷暴产生的闪电通过一根避雷针传导下来，并用它来给一个巨大的电容充电，储存的能量足够让游戏主机加等离子电视工作将近一个世纪。6

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

当然了，如果你真的这么干，那个古老的说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． 来源：我三年级的时候在阿萨旺普塞特小学穿成本•富兰克林的样子给同班同学进行的一个演示。

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

2． 而且我听说闪电从不两次击中同一个地方。

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． 万一你对此感兴趣的话，我确实计算过用经过的龙卷风驱动风力发电机的可能性，得到的结果是它比从闪电中收集电能还不靠谱。龙卷风走廊核心地区平均一个地方每4000年才会有龙卷风经过，即使你设法收集到了台风的所有能量，从长期来说发出的平均电力还不到1瓦。不管你信不信，类似的想法真的有人尝试过。一家叫作AVEtec的公司曾经提出过建造“涡旋引擎”的设想，这种引擎会产生人造龙卷风，并用它们来发电。

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． 尼亚加拉大瀑布的总输出功率相当于每8个小时引爆一枚投在广岛的原子弹！投在长崎的原子弹的爆炸能量相当于1.3个广岛原子弹！作为比较，大平原上的微风携带的动能也相当于1个广岛原子弹。

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

5． 反正你家也已经着火了，因为空中的等离子体放出了大量的热辐射。

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． 由于马拉开波湖西南岸没有移动数据网络覆盖，所以你需要购买卫星运营商的网络服务，这通常意味着延时会高达几百毫秒。