In June 2019, Spanish scientists set out to search for ghosts in the skies above the Mediterranean Sea. These green wisps, which dance above the pinkish-red hyperaltitude lightning during thunderstorms, were only discovered in May of that year. What was that? The only way to find out was to capture one.
But it would be a tedious task. These ghosts have apt names. They are difficult to see with the naked eye and appear for only a heartbeat, dozens of miles above the earth.
“It’s really hard to see ghosts,” he said. maria passas varroa researcher at the Andalucía Institute of Astrophysics in Spain.
However, on September 21, 2019, they finally captured the photo with a special camera. It was a green spirit flickering on top of a maelstrom of jellyfish-shaped fuchsia lightning 80 miles above the ocean. After painstakingly disentangling the various wavelengths of light emitted by the ghost, scientists revealed its elemental composition.
In a study published Tuesday in the journal nature communications, Dr. Passas-Varo and his colleagues revealed that the ghost’s pale skin tone is due in part to excited oxygen, resembling the green glow of the aurora borealis. Nitrogen also plays a role.
However, the main culprit was another element – iron. This was a surprise since the metal was ultimately transported from space.
A better understanding of ghosts and other ephemeral lightning-like entities can help scientists interpret the difficult-to-understand chemistry and physics of Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Dr. Passas-Varo said “there are layers of dancing metal” in and above thunderstorms.
Ghosting is a type of transient luminescent event (TLE). first described by scientists in 1989. TLE can include blue jet is fired They are known to originate upward from thunderstorm clouds, or as crimson-colored upper-atmospheric lightning that comes in a variety of shapes, including carrots and jellyfish. sprite.
TLE is “like fireworks,” says Dr. Passas-Varo. And while little is known about them, especially about ghosts, the first one was observed at the top of a Sprite storm over Oklahoma in May 2019.
To capture their own ghosts, her team aimed a spectroscopic camera, which can use light to see chemistry, into the upper atmosphere from an observatory in Castelgari, Spain. All they could do was wait for a thunderstorm of sprites to appear and hope that at least one of her sprites would be temporarily decorated with ghosts and the camera would be pointed in the right place.
Eventually, I found a jellyfish flying around on a jellyfish sprite.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” Dr. Passas-Varo said.
It was powered primarily by extraterrestrial iron rather than atmospheric oxygen. The camera also revealed the presence of nickel, sodium, and silicon. The complex chemical soup responsible for this ghost even added a yellow-orange hue to its green glow.
All of these elements often come from micrometeorites and deep space dust particles that almost always plunge into the upper atmosphere. This means that ghosts could essentially be considered interplanetary visitors.
Still, some researchers said that too many conclusions should not be drawn from the new paper’s findings.
“The metal signature is interesting, but keep in mind that this is just a one-time event,” he said. Chris Vagasky, a lightning researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was not involved in the new work. To confirm whether all the ghosts are iron-fueled ghosts, “it would be great if we could confirm the results from multiple ghosts,” he added.
He has no doubts that the search for ghosts and other TLEs will continue. Mainly because these ghosts are enchanting in nature.
“It’s really incredible to think that there’s more going on during a thunderstorm than what you see and hear,” Dr. Baguskie said.