schumann

Schumann Resonance

At any given moment, there are about 2,000 thunderstorms rolling over Earth, producing 50 flashes of lightning per second. Each lightning burst creates electromagnetic waves that begin to circle around Earth, captured between Earth’s surface and a boundary about 60 miles up. Some of these waves – if they have the right wavelength – combine to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat known as Schumann resonance. This resonance provides a useful tool to analyze Earth’s weather, and electric environment, and even determine what types of atoms and molecules exist in Earth’s atmosphere. The waves created by lightning do not look like the up-and-down waves of the ocean, but they still oscillate with regions of greater energy and lesser energy. These waves remain trapped inside an atmospheric ceiling created by the lower edge of the “ionosphere” – a part of the atmosphere filled with charged particles, which begins about 60 miles up into the sky. In order for the wave to be in resonance, it has to be as long (or twice, three times as long, etc) as the circumference of Earth. This is an extremely low-frequency wave that can be as low as 8 Hertz (Hz). As this wave flows around Earth, it hits itself again at the perfect spot such that the crests and troughs are aligned. Voila, waves acting in resonance with each other to pump up the original signal. While they’d been predicted in 1952, Schumann resonances were first measured reliably in the early 1960s. Since then, scientists have discovered that variations in the resonances correspond to changes in the seasons, solar activity, activity in Earth’s magnetic environment, water aerosols, in the atmosphere, and other Earth-bound phenomena.