Lightning shows are a spectacular phenomenon to witness, lighting up the dark sky in seconds, trailing along the clouds like an untraveled path on a map. While we think we are seeing the most stunning show around, we are actually missing an entirely different display held above the clouds.
In 2001, researches at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory managed to pick up on something never known before: Lightning shooting from a cloud's top only to reach straight for space. This trajectory pattern baffled researchers. When a lightning bolt forms it is with a negative electrical charge building up near the bottom of a cloud. Once enough energy is stored up, it breaks free, bolting towards earth in the fashion we typically believe it would. Though, more electrons seem to be staying in the clouds, shooting upward to the top where the cloud is positively charged, cancelling out.
But that's not the end of the show, in some cases it seems that the positive charges are being pushed out, causing a flash on the topside of clouds. Climatologists are calling these reverse bolts "gigantic jets". They seem to travel until they hit the atmosphere's nearest proton-filled object: the ionosphere, which is about 50 miles up, sitting right at the edge of space.
These gigantic jets seem to happen most often in the tropics, believed to be because storms there are taller with much stronger winds.
Original Article by Claire Maldarelli found here: https://www.popsci.com/what-happens-when-lightning-doesnt-hit-ground
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