The luminous flashes at the edge of space are not lightning
In short: High above thunderstorm clouds, reddish-orange flashes flicker in the night sky. While they look like terrestrial bolts, these phenomena are actually cold plasma discharges. They behave more like glowing fluorescent tubes than hot electrical strikes, marking a mysterious boundary between our atmosphere and the void beyond.
Sprites occur at extreme altitudes, typically ranging from 50 to 90 km (31–56 mi) above the Earth's surface. They are triggered by positive lightning discharges between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. Because they lack the hot channel temperatures of tropospheric lightning, scientists distinguish them as cold plasma phenomena rather than standard upper-atmospheric lightning. These large-scale electrical discharges appear in a variety of visual shapes. They specifically occur high above cumulonimbus clouds.
Despite sporadic visual reports dating back to at least 1886, sprites remained a mystery for over a century because they lacked systematic evidence. University of Minnesota researchers initially recorded these phenomena via land-based video on 6 July 1989 by chance. It wasn't until NASA Space Shuttle videotapes from 1989 to 1991 provided 17 additional examples that their existence was confirmed. The science community originally relied on serendipitous observations to advance research because ground reports did not trigger systematic searches. These events have appeared for millennia.
The transition from mystery to science accelerated in July 1993, when observations from a mountain ridge and aircraft captured hundreds of new events. This data allowed researchers to establish the basic science of sprites. By 1994, a dedicated campaign popularized the name 'sprite' and introduced a vocabulary for these visual attributes, alongside other phenomena like 'blue jets' and ELVES—brief brightenings discovered in the lower ionosphere. Quantitative measurements of jets were first obtained by Wescott and his team during the 1994 campaign. ELVES was named after its specific electromagnetic pulse source characteristics.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Lightning Sprites at the Edge of Space-Discovery Documentary
- Also: The Role of the Space Shuttle Videotapes in the Discovery of Sprites, Jets, and ELVES | NASA Earthdata
- Also: www.pbs.org — NOVA | At the Edge of Space | Season 40 | Episode 23
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