Is Earth Static Electricity Charged?

Shyam,I dont know if this will answer your question; I found it a while back in the NASA website.

The Global Electric Circuit

During fair weather, a potential difference of 200,000 to 500,000 Volts exists between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere, with a fair weather current of about 2x10^-12 amperes/meter². It is widely believed that this potential difference is due to the world-wide distribution of thunderstorms.

Present measurements indicate that an average of almost 1 ampere of current flows into the stratosphere during the active phase of a typical thunderstorm. Therefore, to maintain the fair weather global electric current flowing to the surface, one to two thousand thunderstorms must be active at any given time. While present theory suggests that thunderstorms are responsible for the ionospheric potential and atmospheric current for fair weather, the details are not fully understood.

Ground-based radio frequency measurements of global rates have significant uncertainties and limitations. A high resolution space based sensor is necessary in order to help eliminate some of the present uncertainties associated with measuring global lightning activity.

Dear Steve

Thanks for the comments. Potential on earth surface to above is about 100V/m. This can be measured. Hence, earth must be a charged ball. Is there a methametical model to compute the charge on the earth considering it as an electrode of a spherical capacitor?

Looking at the picture you have posted I felt that the earth is a ziant living cell (shell) with lots of life regeneration within and the way we are.

Looks aren't everything.

The short answer is yes. Try doing a web search on "Interplanetary Potential" and have a read on some of the papers. They do get a bit technical but I am sure you will have no problem with them.

Dear Masu

"Interplanetary Potential" ? that sounds very interesting one. I never thought of such things other than gravitational pull. Do you have any reference or research data? Now I know that sun also may be charged and there is greater reason for plume of charged particles travelling in some direction more than other. There may be some sort of rivers of such things.

About 35 years ago, I read an article in a model airplane magazine about a circuit for an autopilot that used the 100 v/meter electric field. It used 3 polonium sources (from smoke detectors) as pickups, one at the end of each wing and one on the tail. It was when really high input impedance op-amps first came out, and these were used. I guess it worked quite well as long as you stayed away from metal towers and power lines.

From what I understand the sun has a net positive charge. The reason is that it's basically plasma or in other words hydrogen nuclei on there own. The electrons need to be somewhere so I would guess the planets would have a surplus of electrons but I am only postulating here. Somebody else may know if this is correct or not.

I do remember somebody coming up with the idea of forming an ionized path between the Earth and Moon and using it a an energy source. You would need to be absolutely sure about your calculations as the consequences of getting it wrong could be catastrophic.

So, we're talking about a positively charged "nucleus", and a bunch of negatively charged "particles" orbiting around it - all at different energy levels? Well, at least it's not a "Bohr-ing" concept...

You've got both the Earth's magnetosphere and the solar wind to contend with in such a scheme. My guess is the solar wind might prove to be a substantial and longer-term energy source than the Moon's electrical charge, unless the Moon's charge were replenished by the solar wind, in which case we'd be doing the essentially the same thing.

Speaking of moons, there is a huge natural current loop between Jupiter and its moon Io.

--Europium

Looks something fishy here in having static potential far away from earth due to earth. Ionized media does not through away the electrons very far and they just get too much velocity and no longer find place in so called Bohr Orbit. Even in Plasma some electron are not so fast moving and then perhaps lose energy in collissions and can go back to Bohr orbits and give away the spetrum lines. That is how we get spectrum of Hydrogen and Helium from the Sun.

Even if earth was supper hot in early stage, that does not mean that all its electrons migrated to some other place in the Universe. They just must be nearby looking to cooldown. However, I agree that some electrons might have gone away from earth in same way we leak some amount of gases from earth. There is less chances of losing heavy Protons in comparision to electrons.

Now, as earth starts becoming more and more positively charged due to escape of electrons, it must have greater pull force on the electrons and must not allow them to excape. This must have placed a plug on the electrons leak long ago when earth was hot.

This condition must be tru of all the univese. Hence, these all ziant balls must be positively charged repelling each other with minute force and keeping them separate.

Now, where these our electrons are now if they are not part of any of the bodies. Perhaps moving in the Universe looking for positrons and then getting converted into light? I am not sure if any of the NASA project ever detected the excessive electrons far away or presense of anti-electrons or positrons converting them into light. Looks to me that the vast space must be negatively charged and expanding universe of electrons must be farther than that of our ziant bodies. These electrons if they are combining with anti-matter. If this theory is true then the open space must have a glow all the time with about 501keV light source due to electron anihilation. If we detect this energy peak in the cosmic space then this my prosed theory is worth a Nobel Prize. I think we will need a scintillation counter or ziant side in the space away from all atmosphere for this research.

Are our excessive electrons present in Ionosphere? have they become a satellite due to velocity and made the potential gradient on earth to ionosphere? Do they account for all the electrons we have lost from earth or are these just a part of them? We need to know more about these electrons now to have some better say about the static potential near earth.

Remember when the space shuttle was going to use a tethered wire several miles long trailing behind to power the shuttle?The current was WAY much higher than calculated, and the tether snapped. So, on the next mission, they tried it again this time with a much larger diameter tether.It also snapped due to overload.

Looks like a potential for a lot of energy.What if they could power microwave transmitters and beam power back to earth, or to the moon for supporting a colony?

I have never seen any data detailing exactly how much current was expected or generated on the tether. Anyone know?

Hmmm! Could static charge have played a role in the first moments off the universe, causing matter to clump together? Just a thought.

If gravitation pull was the only force then it might have become a single ball. But charge may be keeping things away. I am not sure how Chandrasephar worked out on maximum possible mass and theory of explosion but his observation says another story.

I have read that NASA story and perhaps they may work on that energy resource some time later. NASA requires a mission for an experiment so this thing might gone in lower priority now.