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A recently released video clip provides stunning support for the
Electric Universe interpretation of one of the most dramatic atmospheric
phenomena on Earth -- above-clouds lightning.
On October 15th, 2019, a pilot named Chris Holmes was flying
about 35,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico when he noticed multiple forms of
powerful electrical discharge called sprites
and jets erupting from a thunderhead.
The still image seen here is a "gigantic jet", a towering form of
electrical discharge reaching all the way to the ionosphere, which is now known
to sometimes occur above powerful thunderstorms.
This exceedingly rare video clip reveals the top of the cloud
from which the jet emerged, affording a
groundbreaking opportunity for insights into the phenomenon.
Investigator Oscar van der Velde, of the Lightning Research
Group, split the video footage into individual frames and described the
observed sequence for the website spaceweather.com
He states, "First, relatively cool blue filaments spring up. These are
streamers akin to St. Elmo's fire. Next, after the jet reaches its maximum height,
another feature crawls more slowly out of the
cloud top -- a white-hot 'lightning leader'."
The Space Weather article notes why this is a surprise for
conventional meteorology, "For years, some researchers thought that gigantic jets
could reach such extreme heights only if their
streamers got a boost from the lightning leader.
Holmes's video shows just the opposite: the gigantic jet reaches the ionosphere
before the lightning leader even leaves the cloud."
Oscar van der Velde concludes on the images, "This suggests that there
may be a much more powerful electric configuration inside the thunderstorm
than was previously thought--perhaps as much as 200 million volts."
To understand the significance of these insights for the Electric Universe
predictions and interpretations of extreme above-clouds electrical
discharge, let us first consider a surprising historical background on the
question of so-called lightning in Earth's upper atmosphere.
Although numerous eyewitness accounts of the phenomena including the testimony of
airline pilots trace back many decades, it was only in the late 1980s that the
first photographic evidence was obtained of an above-clouds discharge called a sprite.
However, as early as the 1920s, the Scottish physicist C.T.R. Wilson predicted
the existence of brief flashes of light above large thunderstorms.
A fundamental question that must be asked is, do
scientists today really understand lightning?
As those who follow this series are aware, what we observe in
nature, as well as recent scientific
discoveries demonstrate that the answer is no.
These points are illustrated when we consider the research into
lightning by Professor Edgar Bering of the University of Houston.
In 2001, when Bering flew a high-altitude balloon above a thunderstorm,
he made the unexpected discovery that when lightning strikes occur both above
and below the clouds, the electrical charge was already present and did not
take time to build up between lightning strikes.
This contradicts the standard notion that lightning is the generator
of the clear air electric field measured
at about 100 volts per meter between the Earth and a clear sky.
In standard theory, lightning's generation of power requires
water droplets to separate charge in
clouds, a process that remains mysterious and unverified.
The Electric Universe theory, however, sees lightning and the
cloud activity as a "load" that is being driven by electric currents from the Sun.
It is the electrical circuitry between the
Sun and the Earth that drives all lightning.
And scientific research provides support for the role
of the electric Sun-Earth connection in lightning.
As we reported previously, in 2014, scientists in the UK
discovered a dramatic increase in lightning strikes for up to 40 days
after a major solar storm.
Simply put, the reason the aforementioned observation of
the gigantic jet is "surprising" is that the electrical charge that created
the jet was already sitting at the cloud tops, which is not surprising at all from
the Electric Universe perspective.
As physicist Wal Thornhill has proposed, the
highest clouds essentially act like one
plate of a capacitor which responds to the build-up of charge in the ionosphere
above, which is where the above- clouds lightning terminates.
Thornhill explains, the gigantic jets and other forms of
above-clouds electrical discharge are electrical breakdown channels in the
Earth's "leaky atmospheric capacitor."
The discharge channel of Birkeland filaments narrows and forms the
bright jets as it reaches into the more dense lower atmosphere.
On our planet, we benefit from having clouds to distribute
lightning more widely than on other planets.
For instance, Venus does not have water clouds, yet the early Russian Venera
space probes discovered evidence for Venusian lightning which is both vastly
more frequent and powerful than Earthly lightning.
And on the planet Mars, where the rarefied atmosphere is about 1/2 of
1% as dense as Earth's, the clearest evidence for powerful lightning-like
discharges is in its towering dust tornados and global dust storms which
are electrically driven phenomena, and just as Earthly lightning appears to
increase in direct response to increased solar activity, we now have evidence that
dramatic dust-raising events on Mars may be linked to outbursts from the Sun.
For several years, scientists have puzzled over dramatic dust plumes which
occasionally erupt up to hundreds of kilometers above the surface of Mars.
As we reported in 2016, investigators studying data from the Mars Express
spacecraft found that, immediately before the observation of a dramatic plume, the
planet was hit by a powerful CME from the Sun.
As one investigator noted, "It's very surprising that was affecting Mars right
before the plume was first observed."
So it seems that an understanding of high-energy electrical discharge
phenomena on planets, including Earth, will demand a new understanding of the
electrical nature of the Sun and of all stars.
It was well over a century ago that physicist Kristian Birkeland
proposed that the earthly Aurorae were produced by electric currents from the Sun.
Astronomers almost universally rejected the idea for many decades, until
it was finally confirmed by discovery.
Likewise, all forms of lightning, as well as the most powerful gigantic jets in
our upper atmosphere, testify to the electrical circuitry that connects all
celestial bodies in our solar system and indeed pervades the entire universe.