Designed to scan the heavens thousands to billions of light-years beyond the solar system, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has now recorded some more down-to-Earth signals. During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial lightning storms. The flashes occurred just before, during and immediately after lightning strikes, as tracked by the World Wide Lightning Location Network. Read more
Lightning's Mirror Image ... Only Much Bigger With a very lucky shot, scientists have captured a one-second image and the electrical fingerprint of huge lightning that flowed 40 miles upward from the top of a storm. These rarely seen, highly charged meteorological events are known as gigantic jets, and they flash up to the lower levels of space, or ionosphere.
Upwards lightning caught on film Scientists have photographed "upwards lightning", a rarely-seen phenomenon where electricity from storms flows into the upper atmosphere. During last year's Tropical Storm Cristobal, lightning reached more than 60km up. Also known as "gigantic jets", these events are just as powerful as cloud-to-ground lightning bolts.
Two hundred years ago today a tremendous thunderstorm led to a bizarre incident. HMS Warren Hastings, one of the largest ships of its time, was moored off Portsmouth. Conditions were clear and calm in the morning but at about 3pm a storm swept in from the west. The wind blew, rain fell in torrents and thunder erupted.
"In the midst of the confusion, occasioned by the storm, three distinct balls of fire were emitted from the heavens. One of them fell into the main topmast cross-trees, killed a man on the spot and set the main mast on fire."
University of Florida and Florida Institute of Technology engineering researchers have narrowed the search for the source of X-rays emitted by lightning, a feat that could one day help predict where lightning will strike.
Scientists have been baffled for centuries about the strange drifting balls of light that appear occasionally during thunderstorms. Theories put forward so far suggest that this ball lightning is either a moving electrical discharge or that it is some kind of self-contained object. Now, research from an Israeli group is making the latter seem more likely. The scientists have created artificial fireballs and then used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble to analyse their composition. They discovered that the fireballs contain about 10^9 particles per cm^3, each of which has an average diameter of about 50 nm Read more
Koreas first astronaut will collect detailed photographic data on mega-lightning that occurs in the earths stratosphere, the government said Monday (Dec. 24).
The Ministry of Science and Technology and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said astronaut Ko San will use a locally developed micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) telescope to capture the unexplained atmospheric phenomenon for future research. He is scheduled to blast off into space on April 8 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and stay in orbit for eight days.
More than 80 per cent of deaths that occur due to lightning can be avoided if the public is made aware about dangers of lightning, astronomer Dr. Chandana Jayaratne said.
Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for several seconds. Thousands of people have reported seeing ball lightning, a luminous sphere that sometimes appears during thunderstorms. It is typically the size of a grapefruit and lasts for a few seconds or minutes, sometimes hovering, even bouncing along the ground.
