The “gigantic jet” that flew into space might have been the strongest lightning strike ever recorded, Scientists claim
A lightning strike travels through the air as the sky grows gloomy and heavy rain pours down. However, this lightning bolt does do something unusual instead of striking downward or swooping sideways through clouds.
What is that unusual thing?
As per sources, from the top of the cloud, it shoots straight up, traveling 50 miles (80 km) and brushing the edge of space on its way up.
What did the Scientists discover?
These bolts are known as gigantic jets. Scientists have recently discovered the most powerful enormous jet yet. These lightning strikes are the rarest and also the most powerful form, appearing as infrequently as 1,000 times a year and discharging more than 50 times the energy of a conventional lightning bolt.
Researchers examined a massive jet that emerged from a cloud over Oklahoma in 2018 for a study that was published on August 3 in the journal Science Advances. The bolt moved about 300 coulombs of energy, or about 60 times the 5-coulomb outcome of a pretty standard bolt of lightning, from the top of the clouds to the lower ionosphere, the layer of charged particles that differentiates Earth’s upper atmosphere from the vacuum of space, according to research into the jet’s radio-wave emissions utilizing satellite and radar data.
It took an equally tremendous amount of luck to be able to record such precise information about the massive bolt of lightning. Using a low-light camera, a citizen scientist near Hawley, Texas, captured the jet on May 14, 2018, as it burst out of a cloud top and connected with charged particles in the ionosphere.
As fortune would have it, according to scientists who examined the video, the jet happened extremely close to the center of a sizable lightning mapping array (LMA), a system of ground-based radio antennae used to track the locations and times of lightning strikes. Additionally, a network of weather-monitoring satellites and a number of weather radar stations were visible to the jet.
These sources were merged by the researchers to conduct an unparalleled analysis of the size, form, and energy output of the enormous jet. The lead research author, Levi Boggs, a research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, mentioned in a statement that the team discovered that the jet’s highest-frequency radio-wave emissions originated from tiny objects called streamers that form at the very tip of a bolt of lightning and establish a “direct electrical contact between the cloud top and the lower ionosphere.”
Meanwhile, a region known as the leader was far farther behind the streamers and carried the maximum electric current. The data also revealed that while the leader was extremely hot, with a temperature of even more than 8,000 degrees F, the streamers were comparatively cool, with a temperature of about 400 degrees F. The researchers found that this disparity applies to all lightning hits, not only gigantic jets.
Why, then, does lightning occasionally flash upward instead than downward?
Massive jets are frequently seen in storms that do not really generate much cloud-to-ground lightning, the team stated, suggesting that the cause of that is likely some form of obstruction that prevents lightning from leaving through the bottom of a cloud.
The scientists also discovered that reports of gigantic aircraft are especially common in tropical areas. The fact that the record-breaking jet above Oklahoma was not a part of a tropical storm system makes it all the more amazing. To comprehend these extraordinary, upside-down lightning strikes, additional study—and a lot more luck is required.
