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A closer look at lightning reveals needle-like structures

Structural features have been identified on positively charged lightning channels that are not present on negatively charged ones. The discovery could explain why these two types of channel have different behaviours.
  1. Earle Williams

    1. Earle Williams is at the Parsons Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

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  2. Joan Montanyà

    1. Joan Montanyà is in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Terrassa, Barcelona 08222, Spain.

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Accelerated electric charge in lightning produces electromagnetic radiation over a broad range of frequencies. For more than a century, lightning has been studied using radio-frequency detection systems. And in the past few years, a radio telescope called the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) has been trained on lightning. This telescope comprises thousands of antennas spread over multiple countries in Europe, and can observe the structure of lightning with unprecedented spatial resolution. Writing in Nature, Hare et al.1 present an analysis of LOFAR observations, and report the discovery of needles — structural features 10–100 metres in length — that extend perpendicularly from initially positively charged lightning channels (see also ref. 2). This finding could lead to a better understanding of lightning and explain why lightning flickers.

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Nature 568, 319-320 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01178-7

References

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