Our scholarly detective answers all questions
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Dear Debbie:
What causes to long streams of
smoke from jet planes fying
way in the sky?
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Debbie:
Technically speaking, this is not smoke in the typical sense, but is water
vapor,
hence the name (of the long
streams you've referenced): vapor trails. They are formed
from water in the jet exhaust,
which condenses in the cold of the upper atmosphere.
There, the temperature may
be as low as -30 degrees fahrenheit. Recall that the colder
the atmosphere or a container
such as a refrigerator, become, the more the water
molecules are inclined to
change its state to a liquid or ice (solid). There vapor trails
you see are ice crystals which
appear to be suspended high above
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