At any moment on the Earth there are roughly 2,000 thunderstorms in progress, with about 50 lightning pulses every second, the Earth is a magnificent place.

Image Credit:- NASA.gov

Introduction

Each lightning pulse produces an electromagnetic wave that begins to circle the earth between the troposphere and mesosphere, and become trapped below the lower edge of the Ionosphere at about 60 Km altitude. Some of the EM waves can interfere constructively increasing in amplitude and also set up a standing wave, this creates an atmospheric resonance or "heart beat", this is the Schumann Resonance (SR).

The resonance effect occurs when the EM wave have a wavelength that is a multiple of the circumference of the Earth (40,075 km). The first harmonic resonant mode occurs when the wavelength is 40,075 KM (1 Earth circumference), the second occurs when the EM wave has a wavelength of 80,150 Km, and so on.

Using a simple equation that relates frequency, the speed of light and wavelength, we can see that the first harmonic of the SR corresponds to a frequency of 7.5 Hertz (per second), the second 15 Hertz, etc, but after 60 Hz the resonance effect decreases. This frequencies fall in the EM spectrum band of Extremely Low Frequency (ELF)

How to detect and data

This was predicted in 1952 by professor Schumann, who was part of Project Paperclip, they were first successfully measured in the early 1960's by Balser and Wagner, you can see the paper Here

The Schumann resonances are now recorded by many stations around the world. The detectors use two horizontal magnetic inductive coils that measures the magnetic field of about 1 pico tesla, and an electric antenna that measures the electric field. The electric field magnitude is about 300 micro volts per meter. The magnitudes of these fields are a lot smaller than characteristic fields of the Earth, so care must be taken to filter out the unwanted noise by applying a low pass band filter of 0-100 Hz.

As mentioned the resonances are caused by the constant bombardment of lightning strikes, so of course they are dependent on the current global storm configuration. Below you can see an image of the last 3 days data of the Schumann Resonance. On the X-axis is time (increasing), and the Y-axis is Frequency (decreasing), the colour represents intensity (Red highest). Notice the varying intensities at the frequencies of the SR harmonics, especially the 1st harmonic of 7.5 Hz. The top band you can see relates to the 1st harmonic, the next evident band is the second and so on, but notice how the intensity decreases with increasing frequency and harmonic. The variation of intensity is due to changing global storm conditions.

Image Credit: - Space Observing System Data of integrated monitoring in Tomsk
Data of the last 3 Days of Schumann Res.

Further studies of effects on Biology

A study was made by Dr Neil Cherry called "Schumann Resonances, a plausible biophysical mechanism for the human health effects of Solar/Geomagnetic Activity" Paper here.
He came to the conclusion that SR's were closely related to Solar and Geomagnetic Activity (S-GMA). Also that the SR signal interacts with the brain and alters the melatonin production, and states that:

This is theoretically predicted and plausible through resonant absorption made possible through frequency matching and tuned circuits. It is shown conclusively that environmental ULF/ELF electromagnetic fields at extremely low intensity do interact with brain tissue, changing the calcium ion fluxes, the EEG and reaction times.

In the paper he shows clear correlation between the Schumann Resonance and the our Human Biological System. Is this something that should be taken into consideration if Human were to create civilisation on another planet?? The evidence suggests so.

Good job for thunderstorms hey........

Here are some links to see the Schumann Resonance data live:-

Space Observing System - Data of integrated monitoring in Tomsk
The Spectrogram Calendar

References are contained throughout the article

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