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German pundits see a ripe metaphor in the collapse of this gigantic structure.

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Firefighters had already cleared the dead fish from the frigid street by the time I showed up, on Friday morning, outside the smashed front doors of Berlin’s five-star Radisson hotel.

Just hours before, the hotel’s massive AquaDom—billed as the largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium tank in the world—had exploded suddenly, causing a surge of more than a quarter-million gallons of saltwater, along with roughly 1,500 fish, to course through the hotel’s lobby and onto street.

Much of the immediate area—a bustling, tourist-packed hub of broad Communist-era boulevards, shadowed by the red-brick spire of Berlin City Hall—was temporarily closed-off. Bemused tourists and locals gawked from the sidewalk.

Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey, who described the aquarium’s sudden bursting as “a downright tsunami,” initially declared that none of the marine life survived the disaster.


A diver cleans the glass of the AquaDom in 2010.
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

But that turned out to be not completely true: Firefighters discovered a handful of survivors flopping helplessly in puddles among the debris of the elevator and in the lower support ring of the massive aquarium, which had, when not exploded, measured roughly 55 feet high and 38 feet wide. Survivors were hauled to safety in plastic tubs. Hundreds more fish were rescued from separate tanks elsewhere in the complex and sent to the Berlin zoo, private fish breeders, and a nearby aquarium for safe-keeping.

Still, the aquatic carnage was extensive—and the reaction, from the press and citizens alike, was one of shock, coupled with a dose of lamentation and self-recrimination. “The WATER BOOM” screamed the cover of BZ, the city’s leading tabloid, under a photo of mangled remains in the ruined lobby. (Many local newspapers led with photos of a giant dead fish.) The local evening news showed footage of pigeons pecking at chunks on the street.

That the explosion happened in Berlin, often cast as the dysfunctional and mismanaged stepchild to a nation otherwise known for quality engineering, struck many as fitting. Several online pundits were quick to draw parallels between the spectacular aquarium failure and the city’s sparkling embarrassment of a new international airport, which ran billions of dollars over budget, opened a decade late and remains largely a nightmare for travelers.

Der Spiegel ran a column describing the explosion of the aquarium as “the perfect symbol for 2022” and a potent metaphor for the last year in German public life. Germany had, in recent years, appeared to be a marvel of stability, until a crack appeared—created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and, all at once, everything gave way.

“The whole structure, apparently so meticulously constructed, collapsed,” Tobias Rapp, an editor at the magazine, wrote about both the giant hotel aquarium and the social fabric of the nation. “Energy shortages, inflation, geopolitical danger: all the scourges from which Germans falsely believed they were safe had suddenly returned.”

How, you may ask, could this isolated fish fiasco become a metaphor for German failure (at least for some pundits)?

It has been an unsettling year. The country that seemed to coast through crisis after crisis apparently unscathed during the Merkel years has finally faced some major reckonings: a winter without cheap Russian gas, an economy sputtering amid inflation, a major war on the E.U.’s border.

Oh, and the powerhouse German national soccer team sent packing early—again!—at the World Cup.

So something about those poor fish being thrown from their tropical pool seemed of-a-piece with it all. Sandra Weeser, a German member of parliament who happened to be staying in the hotel at the time, told a local newspaper reporter that she awoke to the shockwave of the explosion and the building shaking but fell back asleep thinking it must’ve been a dream. After she woke again an hour later, she passed a large parrot fish—already frozen—on her way out.

The chilly weather, which killed the tropical fish almost instantly, didn’t help. Temperatures overnight had tumbled down to about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest of the season so far in Berlin (and some 60 degrees colder than the heated saltwater of the tank).

The aquarium, located just across the Spree River from the Berlin Cathedral in the heart of the city, was a genuine attraction for the German capital. A bar ringed the base of the aquarium in the hotel’s lobby, making it a popular and rather spectacular spot to sip a cocktail in a particularly kitschy and touristy part of town. Visitors could pay to take a slow ride on a glass elevator directly through the center of the tank.

In many ways, the timing of the explosion probably limited the scope of the tragedy. Two people—a guest and a hotel employee—were wounded by flying glass. Giffey, the mayor, said the city was lucky the aquarium burst so early in the morning while guests were asleep, the lobby largely vacant and nearby shops still shuttered.




Emergency services outside Berlin’s five-star Radisson hotel after an aquarium exploded inside.
Reuters

Even hours later, a fire department spokesman told me that the debris from the explosion was too thick for firefighters to work through the wreckage in the lobby. Instead, search and rescue dogs from the Red Cross were brought in to make sure no one was trapped inside.

By Monday morning, the immediate cleanup was mostly complete, although the building itself remained an off-limits disaster zone surrounded by construction fencing. Shops in the building, including a Lindt chocolate outlet and a gift shop peddling tchotchkes festooned with Berlin’s iconic Ampelmännchen traffic-light figures, remained indefinitely closed. Shuttered, too, was the DDR Museum located beneath the hotel, devoted to depicting daily life in the defunct communist German Democratic Republic.

Will the great AquaDom be rebuilt? Unclear. A spokesman for the property owner, Union Investment, told local media that they’re still assessing what to do with the space once the clean-up is over.

Some voices in Berlin are already calling for its return. Ephraim Gothe, a Berlin city councilman who represents the area, told the Berliner Morgenpost that the AquaDom was an attraction of worldwide renown and importance. Unsurprisingly, PETA had already come out swinging against rebuilding it. The organization has threatened legal action and called for a monument to be erected in memory of the dead fish.

But could it ever be the same? A central part of the novelty and attraction of sitting beneath the aquarium was staring in slack-jawed wonder that the entire monstrosity didn’t explode, that the plexiglass walls managed to hold against the weight and pressure of all that water – and wondering just what might happened if even the smallest crack appeared and began to grow.

Back then, back before the entire thing suddenly erupted in a spectacular mess, you could take another sip of your drink and assure yourself that a whole team of eminently qualified experts had created this marvel of modern engineering. And that engineering was German.



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Gigantic Quake Recorded on Mars Was as Powerful as All Others Combined : ScienceAlert

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A tremendous, record-breaking quake that rocked Mars in May of this year was at least five times larger than the previous record-holder, new research has revealed.

It’s unclear what the source of the quake was, but it was definitely peculiar. In addition to being the most powerful quake recorded yet on Mars, it was also the longest by a significant amount, shaking the red planet for 10 hours.

“The energy released by this single marsquake is equivalent to the cumulative energy from all other marsquakes we’ve seen so far,” says seismologist John Clinton of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland, “and although the event was over 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) distant, the waves recorded at InSight were so large they almost saturated our seismometer.”

The new analysis of the quake, published in Geophysical Research Letters, set its magnitude at 4.7. The previous record-holder was a magnitude 4.2 quake detected in August 2021.

That might not sound like a big quake by Earth standards, where the most powerful quake ever recorded tipped a magnitude of around 9.5. But for a planet that had been thought seismically inactive until NASA’s InSight probe started recording its interior in early 2019, it’s impressive.

Although Mars and Earth have a lot in common, there are some really key differences. Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates; and nor does it have a coherent, global magnetic field, often interpreted as a sign that not much is happening in the Martian interior, since Earth’s magnetic field is theorized to be the result of internal thermal convection.

InSight has revealed that Mars isn’t as seismically quiet as we’d previously assumed. It creaks and rumbles, hinting at volcanic activity under the Cerberus Fossae region where the InSight lander squats, monitoring the planet’s hidden innards.

The spectrogram of the quake, recorded on 4 May 2022. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ETH Zurich)

But determining the activity status of the Martian interior isn’t the only reason to monitor marsquakes. The way seismic waves propagate through and across the surface of a planet can help reveal density variations in its interior. In other words, they can be used to reconstruct the structure of the planet.

This is usually done here on Earth, but hundreds of quakes recorded by InSight have allowed scientists to build a map of the Martian interior, too.

The May quake may have been just one seismic event, but it seems it was an important one.

“For the first time we were able to identify surface waves, moving along the crust and upper mantle, that have traveled around the planet multiple times,” Clinton says.

In two other, separate papers in Geophysical Research Letters, teams of scientists have analyzed these waves to try to understand the structure of the crust on Mars, identifying regions of sedimentary rock and possible volcanic activity inside the crust.

But there’s more to be done on the quake itself. Firstly, it originated near, but not from, the Cerberus Fossae region, and could not be traced to any obvious surface features. This suggests that it could be related to something hidden below the crust.

Secondly, marsquakes usually have either a high or a low frequency, the former characterized by quick, short tremors, and the latter by longer, deeper waves with bigger amplitudes. This quake combined both frequency ranges, and the researchers aren’t entirely sure why. However, it’s possible that previously recorded high- and low-frequency marsquakes analyzed separately may be two parts of the same seismic event.

This could mean that scientists need to rethink how marsquakes are understood and analyzed, revealing even more secrets hiding under the deceptively quiet Martian surface.

“This was definitely the biggest marsquake that we have seen,” says planetary scientist Taichi Kawamura of the Paris Globe Institute of Physics in France.

“Stay tuned for more exciting stuff following this.”

The research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

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Gigantic radiation storms have been pummeling Earth for at least 10,000 years and could strike again, tree ring analysis reveals

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A series of sudden and colossal spikes in radiation levels across Earth’s history could have come from a series of unknown, unpredictable and potentially catastrophic cosmic events, a new study has revealed. 

Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or so and are recorded as sudden increases in the radiocarbon levels of ancient tree rings.

The exact cause of the sudden deluges of radiation, which periodically transform an extra chunk of the atmosphere’s nitrogen into carbon sucked up by trees, remains unknown. The leading theory among scientists is that Miyake events are solar flares that are 80 times more powerful than the strongest flare ever recorded. But a new study, published Oct. 26 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, suggests that the origin of the radiation bursts could be even more mysterious than first thought.

Related: Strange new type of solar wave defies physics

“These huge bursts of cosmic radiation, known as Miyake Events, have occurred approximately once every thousand years but what causes them is unclear,” lead author Benjamin Pope, an astrophysicist at the University of Queensland, Australia, said in a statement. “We need to know more, because if one of these happened today, it would destroy technology including satellites, internet cables, long-distance power lines and transformers. The effect on global infrastructure would be unimaginable.”

Each year, temperate tree species develop a new concentric ring around their trunks that, added up, indicates their age. Because trees suck up carbon from the atmosphere, scientists can study the amount of radiation in the atmosphere during Earth’s recent history by measuring tree rings for quantities of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 — produced when energetic cosmic rays collide with atmospheric nitrogen.

Scientists have spotted six Miyake events in tree rings so far, indicated by sudden, single-year leaps in the concentrations of carbon-14 and other isotopes; these occurred in the years 7176 B.C., 5410 B.C., 5259 B.C., 660 B.C., A.D. 774 and A.D. 993; alongside a number of other, smaller events spotted at other times.

To investigate if the sudden carbon-14 spikes were caused by incredibly powerful solar flares, the researchers created a simplified model of the global carbon cycle; inputting the tree ring data to demonstrate how carbon was produced by solar radiation and absorbed into Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and organisms. By comparing their timeline of atmospheric carbon with the known 11-year solar cycle, the researchers expected to find that the years of the Miyake events corresponded to moments of peak solar activity.

But instead they discovered that the Miyake events did not line up with peak solar activity, and some of the events, unlike the brief flashes we recognize as solar flares, lasted for one or two years.

“Rather than a single, instantaneous explosion or flare, what we may be looking at is a kind of astrophysical ‘storm’ or outburst,” first author Qingyuan Zhang, a mathematician  at the University of Queensland, said in the statement. 

The intensity of these unexplained cosmic barrages is hard to understate. The largest solar storm ever recorded is the 1859 Carrington Event, which, after slamming into Earth, sent powerful streams of solar particles that fried telegraph systems all over the world and caused auroras brighter than the light of the full moon to appear as far south as the Caribbean. The storm released roughly the same energy as 10 billion 1-megaton atomic bombs. If an equally powerful flare were to hit Earth now, it would cause an ‘internet apocalypse,’ blackouts, and trillions of dollars’ worth of damage, according to scientists. But the Carrington Event was 80 times less powerful than the A.D. 774 Miyake event.

Having cast doubt on the spikes coming from conventionally understood solar flares, the researchers considered whether the Miyake events were generated by supernovas or a type of solar superflare. But these alternate theories have holes too: Supernovas sometimes produce radiocarbon spikes in Earth’s atmosphere, but sometimes they don’t; and stars like ours are not known to produce solar flares energetic enough to cause the Miyake events. Evidence for a solar superflare is also missing in recovered ice core nitrate records for the events in A.D. 774 AD and A.D. 993.

Venturing into the historical records brought up only two tantalizing references. One made in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a ninth century collection of annals recounting Anglo-Saxon history) refers to a possible aurora in the form of a “red crucifix, after sunset” being spotted in the sky in A.D. 774, but the researchers think it may also have been an optical illusion known as a moon ring. Another account, made in A.D. 775 in the Chinese chronicle Jiutangshu, describes what also could have been an aurora, but its existence is so far not backed up by other records.

The researchers’ next step is to gather more tree ring and ice core data to further pin down the timing of the events and the mixtures of isotopes produced by them. But the scientists’ uncertainty as to what the events are, or how to predict when they occur, is “very disturbing,” Pope said.

“Based on available data, there’s roughly a one percent chance of seeing another one within the next decade. But we don’t know how to predict it or what harms it may cause,” Pope added. “These odds are quite alarming, and lay the foundation for further research.”

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Gigantic 130-foot wide asteroid is hurtling towards Earth today, warns NASA

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A massive asteroid will be making its closest approach to the Earth today, October 8, according to NASA. Is there a risk of asteroid strike? Find out.

The Earth is dodging asteroids left and right. After escaping the threat from a couple of asteroids yesterday, including a 100-foot space rock, the Earth again faces the scare of an even larger one. According to NASA, a 130-foot wide asteroid is approaching the Earth today, October 8 and this is a scary development. An asteroid this size can easily flatten a major city in the world if it ends up getting dragged by the Earth’s gravitational pull and unleash a nightmarish hell on our planet. So, how likely is the chance of an asteroid strike? Read on to find out.

The tech NASA leverages to protect the Earth

NASA has built and operates various departments that are tasked with the duty of tracking any near Earth object (NEO) that have the potential to hit the Earth and kill us. These departments use various ground based telescopes, satellite telescopes such as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) as well as analysis and prediction models that not only track more than 20,000 space rocks but also predict the likelihood of any of them hitting us in the next 100 years.

Will this massive asteroid hit the Earth?

According to the data provided by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as well as Center for Near Earth Objects Studies (CNEOS) and Small-Body database by NASA, we know quite a bit about this asteroid. The Apollo-class space rock has been named 2022 SU21 and it was first discovered on September 27 of this year. The asteroid is expected to come as close as 761 thousand kilometers to the Earth. While many asteroids pass the Earth on a daily basis, rarely a few come closer than a million kilometers. The asteroid also has an extremely high speed of 71,064 kilometers per hour which means if it does get deflected, it can reach the Earth within hours. And this is why there is a serious concern over this celestial body.

But if the NASA predictions are to be believed, the asteroid will likely make a safe passage across the planet. But, space is an unknown territory and nothing can be left to assumptions. That’s why NASA will be tracking this asteroid till it passes the Earth by and reaches a safe distance.

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A Gigantic Solar Eruption Just Emerged From The Far Side of The Sun : ScienceAlert

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The Sun has been up to some pretty intense shenanigans lately, but a recent eruption on the far side looks to be absolute science gold.

On the evening of September 5 GMT, an enormous coronal mass ejection (CME) was recorded exploding on the far side of the Sun, sending a radiation storm out across the Solar System. It was a type known as a halo CME, in which an expanding halo of hot gas can be seen spewing out around the entire Sun.

Sometimes this means that the CME is headed straight for Earth. However, this eruption was on the far side, so it’s heading away, and we won’t see any of the usual effects of a solar storm here on our home planet.

But Venus was right in the path of the oncoming storm – and with it, Solar Orbiter, a space probe jointly run by the European Space Agency and NASA that is currently near Venus after a September 4 gravity assist on its mission to take closeup observations of our home star.

This has given us the rare opportunity to observe and measure a gigantic, farside CME, something that is usually rather difficult for us to do.

“This is no run-of-the-mill event. Many science papers will be studying this for years to come,” solar physicist George Ho of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory told Spaceweather.

“I can safely say the Sept. 5th event is one of the largest (if not THE largest) Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) storms that we have seen so far since Solar Orbiter launched in 2020.”

It’s unclear exactly where the Sun erupted from, but it seems likely that the culprit is a sunspot region called AR 3088, which rotated away behind the disk of the Sun at the end of August.

As it did so, it left a parting shot – a huge M2-class flare, directed away from Earth.

Helioseismology – the study of internal oscillations of the Sun, based on surface vibrations – can be used to detect sunspots on the far side of our home star.

That’s because accumulations of magnetic fields, such as sunspots, can affect the speed of sound waves bouncing around inside the Sun.

Helioseismic measurements from NASA suggest that AR 3088 may have grown after it departed our side of the Sun.

There are many spacecraft that might not survive such an intense buffeting from the Sun. But Solar Orbiter, as the name suggests, was built to withstand quite a solar pummeling.

And it’s equipped with instrumentation to measure solar phenomena, including the Sun’s violent eruptions.

In fact, Solar Orbiter had been in the path of an earlier CME that erupted on August 30 GMT, just prior to the gravity assist maneuver.

Its instruments recorded, in both events, a significant uptick in solar energetic particles. This is information that can help scientists categorize these events, and better understand the behavior of the Sun, and its impact on the space environment.

AR 3088 is still on the far side of the Sun, and, if it’s going to re-emerge, won’t do so for some days. So it’s entirely possible that, by the time it gets back around to us, it will be smaller and quieter.

Currently, all is quiet in Earth-directed Sun-land, with no solar storms on the horizon.

There are a few sunspot regions visible, but they all seem to be fairly subdued for the time being, with only milder CMEs erupting on the solar near side.

However, the Sun is getting into the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, so we should see more powerful eruptions occurring in the not-too-distant future.

If you want to stay on top of solar weather forecasts, and what they mean for Earth, you can check in on you can follow the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the British Met Office, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and SpaceWeatherLive at their respective websites.



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Solar Orbiter Just Got Hit by a Gigantic Outburst From the Sun

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Artist’s depiction of Solar Orbiter.
Illustration: ESA/ATG medialab

Solar Orbiter has been traveling through space for more than two years, making several close flybys of Venus as it steadily inches closer to the Sun. On September 4, the small spacecraft was in the midst of its most recent gravitational assist when it felt the violent wrath of our host star.

The Sun fired off a gigantic coronal mass ejection on August 30, reaching the spacecraft just a few days later. Thankfully, Solar Orbiter is built to withstand these types of temperamental outbursts from the Sun, and it was even able to collect valuable data on solar storms.

A large coronal mass ejection (CME) was recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on August 30.
Gif: ESA/NASA SOHO

Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter is a collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. It’s designed to observe the Sun from up close and resolve some of the lingering mysteries about solar wind, the Sun’s magnetic field, and the rather unpredictable space weather. Throughout the course of its decade-long mission, the spacecraft will perform several flybys of Venus to adjust its orbit, bringing it closer to the Sun and out of the solar system plane such that it can peer down at the Sun from a unique vantage point. Solar Orbiter returns to Venus every few orbits around the Sun (one orbit takes around 168 days), but its latest rendezvous with the second planet was unusually eventful.

The Sun frequently produces coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or ejections of plasma that shoot out from the Sun and spread outward through the solar system. CMEs erode the Venusian atmosphere as the solar wave strips the planet of its gases, according to an ESA statement. On August 30, a massive CME shot out of the Sun and headed towards Venus. It reached the planet just as Solar Orbiter was about to make its third close flyby of Venus, with the spacecraft recording an increase in solar energetic particles.

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Some of the spacecraft’s instruments had to be turned off during its flyby around Venus, but its scientific instruments were still running, allowing it to collect valuable data on the Sun’s latest outburst. Solar Orbiter is designed to withstand a distance of just 0.27 AU from the Sun’s surface (almost three-quarters of the total distance from Earth to the Sun), where temperatures reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537 degrees Celsius). The spacecraft has a special black coating that protects it from the Sun’s scorching temperatures. Solar Orbiter will be capable of getting close enough to the Sun to observe its eruptions without being harmed.

Understanding solar flares is crucial for the future of space exploration as space weather can pose serious risks for spacecraft and astronauts venturing off to cosmic destinations.

“Gathering data on events like this is crucial to understanding how they arise, improving our space weather models, forecasts and early-warning systems,” Alexi Glover, ESA Space Weather Service Coordinator, said in the statement. “Solar Orbiter is providing us with an excellent opportunity to compare our forecasts with real observations and test how well our models and tools perform for these regions.”

More: Sun-Orbiting Spacecraft Takes Fascinating Images of a Coronal Mass Ejection

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‘Gigantic jet’ that shot into space may be the most powerful lightning bolt ever detected

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The sky turns dark, a heavy rain falls and a bolt of lightning crackles through the air. But instead of striking down toward the ground, or zipping sideways between clouds, this lightning bolt does something unexpected: It blasts straight upward from the top of the cloud, shooting 50 miles (80 kilometers) into the sky, grazing the lower edge of space.

Bolts like these are called gigantic jets. They are the rarest and most powerful sort of lightning, occurring as few as 1,000 times a year and emitting more than 50 times as much energy as a typical lightning bolt — and now, scientists have just detected the single most powerful gigantic jet yet.

In a study published Aug. 3 in the journal Science Advances (opens in new tab), researchers analyzed a gigantic jet that shot out of a cloud over Oklahoma in 2018. By studying the jet’s radio-wave (opens in new tab) emissions using satellite and radar data, the team learned that the bolt moved approximately 300 coulombs of energy from the top of the cloud to the lower ionosphere — the layer of charged particles that separates Earth’s upper atmosphere from the vacuum of space — or roughly 60 times the 5-coulomb output of a typical lightning bolt.

“The charge transfer is nearly double the previous largest by a gigantic jet and is comparable to the largest ever recorded for cloud-to-ground strokes,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Related: What’s the longest lightning bolt ever recorded? (opens in new tab)

Capturing such detailed data on the massive stroke of lightning required an equally massive stroke of luck. A citizen scientist based in Hawley, Texas filmed the jet with a low-light camera on May 14, 2018, watching as the gargantuan discharge shot out of a cloud top before connecting with charged particles in the ionosphere, some 60 miles (96 km) above the ground.

Scientists analyzing the footage found that, as luck would have it, the jet occurred very near the center of a large lightning mapping array (LMA) — a network of ground-based radio antennas used to map the locations and times of lightning strikes. The jet was also within range of several weather radar systems, as well as a weather-watching satellite network.

With these sources combined, the researchers studied the size, shape and energy output of the gigantic jet in unprecedented detail. The researchers found that the jet’s highest-frequency radio-wave emissions (the kind that LMAs are built to detect) came from small structures called streamers, which develop at the very tip of a lightning bolt and create a “direct electrical connection between the cloud top and the lower ionosphere,” lead study author Levi Boggs, a research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, said in a statement (opens in new tab).

The strongest electric current, meanwhile, flowed considerably behind the streamers, in a section called the leader. The data also showed that while the streamers were relatively cool, with a temperature (opens in new tab) of roughly 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 degrees Celsius), the leader was scorching hot, with a temperature of more than 8,000 degrees F (4,426 C). This discrepancy is true of all lightning strikes, not just gigantic jets, the researchers wrote.

So, why does lightning sometimes blast up instead of down? Scientists still aren’t totally clear on that, but it likely involves some sort of blockage that prevents lightning from escaping through the bottom of a cloud; gigantic jets are typically observed in storms that don’t produce many cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, the team added. 

For whatever reason, there is usually a suppression of cloud-to-ground discharges,” Boggs said. “In the absence of the lightning discharges we normally see, the gigantic jet may relieve the buildup of excess negative charge in the cloud.”

Gigantic jets are also reported most frequently in tropical regions, the team noted. This makes the record-breaking jet over Oklahoma all the more remarkable; the jet was not part of a tropical storm system. More research — and a lot more luck — is needed to understand these epic, upside-down lightning strikes.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Unraveling the Mysteries of “Gigantic Jet” Lightning Bursts That Reach 50 Miles Into Space

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The telescopes at Maunakea sit calmly at an altitude of around 4200 meters (13,800 feet) beneath a sky filled with extraordinary light. Gemini North’s nighttime Cloud Cams captured this extraordinary light phenomenon. The column of blue and red lights surrounded by a bright blaze of white light appears so otherworldly that it looks like it must be a special effect. This breathtaking image, however, is entirely real. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/A. Smith

New information about an elusive atmospheric phenomenon known as gigantic jets has been uncovered by a detailed 3D study of a massive electrical discharge that rose 50 miles into space above an Oklahoma thunderstorm. As the most powerful gigantic jet studied so far, the Oklahoma discharge carried 100 times as much electrical charge as a typical thunderstorm lightning bolt.

This image series, taken from a video, shows the formation of a gigantic jet over Oklahoma in May 2018. Credit: Chris Holmes

The gigantic jet moved an estimated 300 coulombs of electrical charge from the thunderstorm into the ionosphere – the lower edge of space. Typical lightning bolts carry less than five coulombs between the cloud and ground or within clouds. The upward discharge included relatively cool (approximately 400 degrees

Radio mapping sources extending up from the convective structure of the storm. The gray plane represents the storm top. Credit: Georgia Tech Research Institute

Steve Cummer, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke, uses the electromagnetic waves that lightning emits to study the powerful phenomenon. He operates a research site where sensors resembling conventional antennas are arrayed in an otherwise empty field, waiting to pick up signals from locally occurring storms.

“The VHF and optical signals definitively confirmed what researchers had suspected but not yet proven: that the VHF radio from lightning is emitted by small structures called streamers that are at the very tip of the developing lightning, while the strongest electric current flows significantly behind this tip in an electrically conducting channel called a leader,” Cummer said.

Doug Mach, a co-author of the paper at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), said the study was unique in determining that the 3D locations for the lightning’s optical emissions were well above the cloud tops.

“The fact that the gigantic jet was detected by several systems, including the Lightning Mapping Array and two geostationary optical lightning instruments, was a unique event and gives us a lot more information on gigantic jets,” Mach said. “More importantly, this is probably the first time that a gigantic jet has been three-dimensionally mapped above the clouds with the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument set.”

GTRI researcher Levi Boggs is shown with a schematic showing the structure of a gigantic jet. Credit: Georgia Tech Research Institute

Gigantic jets have been observed and studied over the past two decades. However, because there’s no specific observing system to look for them, detections have been rare. Boggs learned about the Oklahoma event from a colleague, who told him about a gigantic jet that had been photographed by a citizen-scientist who had a low-light camera in operation on May 14, 2018.

Fortuitously, the event took place in a location with a nearby VHF lightning mapping system, within range of two Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) locations and accessible to instruments on satellites from NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) network. Boggs determined that the data from those systems were available and worked with colleagues to bring it together for analysis.

“The detailed data showed that those cold streamers start their propagation right above the cloud top,” Boggs explained. “They propagate all the way to the lower ionosphere to an altitude of 50-60 miles, making a direct electrical connection between the cloud top and the lower ionosphere, which is the lower edge of space.”

That connection transfers thousands of amperes of current in about a second. The upward discharge transferred negative charge from the cloud to the ionosphere, typical of gigantic jets.

The data showed that as the discharge ascended from the cloud top, VHF radio sources were detected at altitudes of 22 to 45 kilometers (13 to 28 miles), while optical emissions from the lightning leaders remained near the cloud top at an altitude of 15 to 20 kilometers (9 to 12 miles). The simultaneous 3D radio and optical data indicate that VHF lightning networks detect emissions from streamer corona rather than the leader channel, which has broad implications to lightning physics beyond that of gigantic jets.

Why do the gigantic jets shoot charge into space? Researchers speculate that something may be blocking the flow of charge downward – or toward other clouds. Records of the Oklahoma event show little lightning activity from the storm before it fired the record gigantic jet.

“For whatever reason, there is usually a suppression of cloud-to-ground discharges,” Boggs said. “There is a buildup of negative charge, and then we think that the conditions in the storm top weaken the uppermost charge layer, which is usually positive. In the absence of the lightning discharges we normally see, the gigantic jet may relieve the buildup of excess negative charge in the cloud.”

For now, there are many unanswered questions about gigantic jets, which are part of a class of mysterious transient luminous events. That’s because observations of them are rare and happen by chance – from pilots or aircraft passengers happening to see them or ground observers operating night-scanning cameras.

Estimates for the frequency of gigantic jets range from 1,000 per year up to 50,000 per year. They’ve been reported more often in tropical regions of the globe. However, the Oklahoma gigantic jet – which was twice as powerful as the next strongest one – wasn’t part of a tropical storm system.

Beyond their novelty, gigantic jets could have an impact on the operation of satellites in low-earth orbit, Boggs said. As more of those space vehicles are launched, signal degradation and performance issues could become more significant. The gigantic jets could also affect technologies such as over-the-horizon radars that bounce radio waves off the ionosphere.

Reference: “Upward propagation of gigantic jets revealed by 3D radio and optical mapping” by Levi D. Boggs, Doug Mach, Eric Bruning, Ningyu Liu, Oscar A. van der Velde, Joan Montanyá, Steve Cummer, Kevin Palivec, Vanna Chmielewski, Don MacGorman and Michael Peterson, 3 August 2022, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl8731

Boggs is affiliated with the Severe Storms Research Center, which was established at GTRI to develop improved technologies for warning of severe storms, such as tornadoes, that are common in Georgia. The work on gigantic jets and other atmospheric phenomena is part of that effort.



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Science

Gigantic Crowds Expected for Inaugural Launch of NASA’s Mega Rocket

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Spectators watch the Space Shuttle Atlantis blasting off on July 8, 2011. The launch was the 135th and final Space Shuttle launch for NASA.
Photo: Phil Sandlin (AP)

NASA’s SLS rocket is slated to launch for the first time in just three weeks, rumbling off the launch pad with 8.8 million pounds of thrust. There to see it take flight will be thousands upon thousands of spectators, as the Artemis era officially gets underway.

The 322-foot-tall Space Launch System is the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever built, launching with 15% more power than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket and nearly 12% more power than the system that delivered the Space Shuttle to orbit. Attending an SLS launch will be a feast for the senses—and a major attraction for tourists visiting Florida’s Space Coast.

Artemis 1—the inaugural launch of SLS—is currently scheduled for August 29 at 8:33 a.m. ET, with backup windows available on September 2 and September 5. A local tourism official told Florida Today that more than 100,000 visitors are expected to attend the launch, in which SLS will ascend from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center and attempt to send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 42-day journey around the Moon and back. The launch will signify the start of the Artemis era and potentially set the stage for a crewed repeat of the mission in 2024 and a crewed mission to the lunar surface no earlier than 2025.

The Space Coast is no stranger to big crowds. During the Shuttle era, it wasn’t uncommon for half a million people to attend a launch, and as Peter Cranis, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism, told Florida Today, launches of SpaceX Crew Dragons are drawing as many as 250,000 visitors. Accordingly, the estimate of 100,000 people for the SLS launch may be on the low side, though it’s tough to tell.

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Indeed, enthusiasm for NASA’s Artemis program hasn’t been great. Earlier this year, none of the contestants on Jeopardy! knew about the upcoming Moon missions, and during a NASA media briefing on August 3, a reporter from Ohio claimed that only two people out of 30 in his newsroom knew that the United States was returning to the Moon. NASA administrator Bill Nelson was taken aback by this claim, saying reporters in Orlando are certainly aware of the Artemis missions and that the eventual Moon landings will capture the public’s attention and reach the nation’s front pages.

Regardless, the influx of visitors to the area could strain the area’s ability to host them. Florida Today says just slightly more than 10,000 hotel rooms and 4,500 vacation units are available in Brevard County. That said, many visitors from the surrounding area, such as Orlando, won’t be staying the night.

For tourists, the Space Coast is truly living up to its name. In addition to its gorgeous beaches, this Atlantic coastal stretch is now witness to a steady stream of rocket launches. The current year alone has already seen 32 launches from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, in a pace that hasn’t been seen since the 1960s.

Tourists can watch these launches from the beach, in designated areas near the launch pad, and even from a rooftop bar. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex presents another attraction, including the newly opened Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex, which features a scale model of SLS, replica spacesuits, and a SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster.

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Science

Scientists release new findings about gigantic lightning jets – study

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A new study found new information about gigantic jets, which are supercharged lightning bolts that shoot upward.

Researchers examined the most powerful gigantic jet studied yet, which occurred in Oklahoma with 100 times more electrical charge than a regular lightning bolt.

In the peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday, the researchers created a three-dimensional map of the Oklahoma jet, according to corresponding author Levi Boggs, a scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

“We were able to map this gigantic jet in three dimensions with really high-quality data,” Boggs said. “We were able to see very high frequency (VHF) sources above the cloud top, which had not been seen before with this level of detail. Using satellite and radar data, we were able to learn where the very hot leader portion of the discharge was located above the cloud.”

As the Oklahoma jet emerged from the top of a cloud, the researchers detected multiple very high frequency (VHF) radio sources at an altitude of 22-45km, as well as simultaneous optical emissions near the top of the cloud at an altitude of 15-20 km. This indicated that the VHF sources were produced by small structures at the tip of the lightning bolt called streamers and that the streamer discharge activity can reach all the way from the top of the cloud to the ionosphere, according to the study.

Red sprite lightning seen from ISS (credit: NASA/EXPEDITION 31/PUBLIC DOMAIN/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

Streamers and leaders

Furthermore, The data from the 3D radio and optical emissions suggested that networks of VHF lightning detect emissions from the top of the streamers, not the leader, a current that flows behind the tip.

“The radio and optical data show the first clear evidence that the VHF observed by lightning networks is produced by streamers ahead of the leader,” the study read.

Study co-author Doug Mach of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) emphasized the study’s novel approach to using 3D mapping to determine that the lightning’s optical emissions occurred far above the top of the clouds.

“The fact that the gigantic jet was detected by several systems, including the Lightning Mapping Array and two geostationary optical lightning instruments, was a unique event and gives us a lot more information on gigantic jets,” he said, adding, “More importantly, this is probably the first time that a gigantic jet has been three-dimensionally mapped above the clouds with the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument set.”

According to the researchers, these findings may have a major impact on lightning physics in general.



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