Show of Hands

Question to answer your question: Can thunder occur without lightning? Can lightning occur without thunder? (whether or not you are close enough to hear it is an entirely different matter.)

It's the same thing, you can see and then hear it.

When I was little, I used to think thunder was from the angels bowling with god, and lightning was when God got a gutterball. LMAO.

One is the sound made by the rapid expansion of air. He other is a bunch of electricity. They are entire different things even if related.

Uh, seriously. Thunder is produced by the Lightning but it's not the same thing. One is electricity and the other sound. That's like saying jet noise and jets are the same thing.

They are the same occurrence; the only reason we experience them separately is because sound travels slower than light.

I know intellectually they are just different aspects of the same thing...when I stop and think about it, but as it is occurring I think of them separately...most of the time.

Do you hear the thunder oh can you see the Lightning? We have angered God and now the heavens are all fighting. That's the only conceivable reason for this storm - we must make amends and sacrifice all our first born.

I mean lightning is lightning. Thunder is the sound of lightning. They're different things in the same sense that a cat and its 'meow' are different things.

Does this question confuse the hell out of anyone else?

I've heard thunder with no lightning, but I've never seen lightning with no thunder.

Same cause ...two things!

Would lightning in a vacuum be accompanied by thunder?🤔 I think not so I would have to say separate. But my first inclination was the same because they are both a result of one electrical discharge experienced through different mediums.

I'd really like the opinion of @firefly5

They both come from Thor's hammer

An electrical discharge releases energy that makes a light and causes sound. No, they're not interchangeably exactly the same, but they're both different aspects of the same thing—the lightning is what is seen, and the thunder is what is heard. Like when something explodes—there's light and fire (visual) as well as a boom (audible), and while they're not identical, they're still both part of the explosion.

Another example is when someone hits a drum. You see the impact of the drumstick on the drum and the vibration of the drum, and you hear the pitch of the drum. It's all still a beat of the drum.

Without lightning there cannot be thunder. And whether you hear it or not every lightning strike produces thunder. They can only exist together. For this reason I would consider then to be aspects of the same thing.

I see and hear a movie but the audio and visual are essentially the same thing - the movie. I can turn away or mute it but the other is still there, I'm just not experiencing it.

Lightning is what you see, thunder is what you hear. The occurrence is an electrical discharge.

They are objectively different aspects of the same thing. You can't have one without the other.

One is an electrical discharge, the other is sound. They are most certainly not the same; the thunder is caused by the lightning, never the other way around.

Sometime there's lighting with no thunder

While I realize they are different aspects of the same thing, I think of them as different things.

We could expand on this philosophical question even further:

"Is every thing a different thing or a different aspect of the same thing starting from the big bang?"

Technically speaking, they are two things. The Lightning itself has no sound. What creates thunder is the immense power of a lightning bolt literally exploding the space around them, causing the air itself to explode; thus making thunder

I think of them as two separate things, but I understand their relationship.

Ok all you pretend scientist wanna be scientists I'm waiting for your really long sciencey explanations (which I won't read) displaying your massive brainpower please enlighten us all

Ya, I kinda think of it as the same thing.

Two different things. One is thunder, the other is lightening.

That's like asking whether the flash and the bang of an explosion are aspects of the same thing or different. It's two effects of the same thing, in this question a lightning strike.