"Gigantic Jets" Blast Electricity Into the Ionosphere

New Scientist has an update on the so-called "gigantic jets" first discovered in 2003 — these are lightning bolts that reach from cloud tops upward into the ionosphere, as high as 90 kilometers. (There's a video at the link.) What's new is that researchers from Duke University have managed to measure the electrical discharge from a gigantic jet and confirm that they carry as much energy skyward as ordinary lightning strikes carry to the ground. According to the article, "Gigantic jets are one of a host of new atmospheric phenomena discovered in recent years. Other examples are sprites and blue jets."

Comments

Re:Sprites

[causality]

In many cases, getting the science right is less difficult than getting the science community and the general public to accept your discovery.

And that's a serious problem. Those two should be one and the same. Anytime it is otherwise, what you have is not science but a religion that uses scientific language.

I think the view of what "skepticism" means has a lot to do with this. At one point, skepticism meant something like "we really don't know either way, we should assume nothing, and we should ask questions and investigate before any conclusions are drawn." Now, it means something more like "we will deny this discovery no matter what, even if that means clutching at straws or using flimsy reasoning, until it becomes blatantly smack-you-in-the-face obvious and even then we will acknowledge it only reluctantly and preferably when a lot of other people do so first." This can only lead to stagnation.