You ’ve sure enough pick up about Thursday ’s incident at a Con Edison substation in New York City that temporarily knocked out power at LaGuardia drome and pose the dark skies shine with an eerie cobalt blue . We wondered : What made it so BLUE ?
Con Ed ab initio twirp alaughably understatedcomment to depict the tremendous explosion seen by thousands , if not hundreds of thousands of people : “ There was a abbreviated electric fire at our substation in Astoria which regard some electrical transformer and induce a transmission dip in the country . ”
But this daybreak , Con Ed said that it was not a fire , nor was it a transformer explosion , according toWABC - TV : “ The electric faulting on the 138,000 - volt equipment caused a free burning electric arc flash that was seeable across a wide-eyed surface area . The affected equipment was sequester to a single section within the substation . ”
spark flashes occur when electrical current whirl through a normally non - conductive sensitive , like melody , on its manner between two electrodes . This ionizes the medium and creates an “ electrical arc ” between the electrodes , characterized by a in high spirits current , in high spirits temperature , and the visible heartbeat — the result of ionization in the metier . This conception is employ in electric arc welding , and even in lamps during the previous 19th century . Despite other reports , it ’s not the same as lightning , which is a spark or discharge . Arcs are typically sustained over a longer period of time .
The puritanic color was the result of delirious air molecules . If you remember back to high school , different excited gases relinquish dissimilar color . retiring transformer explosions have also resulted in bluish gleaming .
“ It ’s a corona , ” Peter Sauer , professor of electrical and computer technology at the University of Illinois , told Gizmodo . “ It happens whenever there ’s an arc . There ’s a bluish lighting that come off of corona waiver on high-pitched - voltage transmission personal credit line , specially when it ’s humid . It ’s the ionization of the melody . ”
fundamentally , it ’s a curt circle on the relatively high - voltage line , he pronounce . It could have been because of failed insulation , debris , or something else ; we wo n’t know for certain until Con Ed investigates .
Arc flash are especially bright and hot , and companies use various method to stop these arcs shape between electrode . Clearly , one of those methods fail yesterday . So , though eerie , the racy flash was n’t aliens and was n’t even that strange , necessarily . It was just some incorrect electrical equipment and a deal of ionized strain .
Science
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