• Question: What exactly causes lightning and thunder?

    Asked by InxAlfa to Eoin, Ester, Natasha, Paul, Tom on 15 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Eoin McKinney

      Eoin McKinney answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      They’re really caused by the same thing – thunder is the sound of lightning. We hear and see them at different times due to the different speeds of sound and light. Basically clouds rub against other clouds or the ground and this produces electrical charge. This gets released in a big flash as lightning. This also causes the air around it to expand rapidly which produces a ‘sonic boom’ that we hear as thunder.

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