The World's Top 10 Lightning Hotspots Revealed

The lightning hotspots are shown on this map. In the top ten, the the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took five places with Kabare Territory in the country's east near Lake Tanganyika taking second spot with 205 strikes. South America took a further two places

Daily Mail: Africa and South America are the most electric places on Earth: The world's top 10 lightning hotspots revealed

* Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, has he highest rate of lightning strikes
* A single square kilometre on the lake gets more than 230 times a year
* Africa and South America dominate the list with areas around Central America, the Caribbean and Asia featuring heavily outside of the top 20 places

When a storm comes we all know not to stand by a tree or in the middle of a golf course.

And now you can add to that list being on a boat in the middle of a South American lake which is the most lightning-struck place on Earth.

A single square kilometre of Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, has been found to have the highest rate of lightning strikes in the world getting strikes more than 230 times a year.

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CSN Editor: And I thought North America was the #1 place for lightning strikes.

NASA Lauches Five Rockets In Sequence

The red dots over the water show where the five rockets of NASA's ATREX mission will deploy chemical tracers to watch how super-fast winds move some 60 miles up in the atmosphere. Three cameras at different sites will track the cloud tracers. NASA / Larsen

NASA Launches Five-Rocket Science Extravaganza At Last -- MSNBC/Space

ATREX mission studies high-level winds; glowing trails visible in skies over East Coast

At almost literally the last minute, NASA launched five suborbital sounding rockets early Tuesday on a mission to study high-level jet stream winds by creating artificial glowing clouds near the edge of space.

After several delays, the rockets started blasting off from their pads in Virginia just before the close of the day's scheduled launch window at 5 a.m. ET. The launches were held up until the very end by concerns about winds as well as boats that had strayed into the restricted range zone. But all the conditions turned "green" just in time for liftoff.

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My Comment: 5 rockets launched one after another .... that must have been a cool display. When video becomes available, I will post it.

Did Carbon Dioxide Just Save The Earth?

Earth's atmosphere lights up at infrared wavelengths during the solar storms of March 8-10, 2012. A ScienceCast video explains the physics of this phenomenon. Play it!

Carbon Dioxide Just Saved Earth -- Don Surber

God bless the John Amos power plant across the river from Poca, West Virginia, and all the other producers of CO2.

Those tiny molecules of carbon dioxide along with their cousins, nitric oxide, spared life on the planet from becoming crispy critters earlier this month.

It seems the Sun belched its biggest a coronal mass ejection in 7 years and the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy. The thermosphere is part of that invisible cloud of gases that blankets the Earth. Scientists call it the atmosphere.

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Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Absorbed 26 Billion kWh Of Energy

Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Hit by 26 Billion kWh of Energy -- Sci-Tech Daily

As researchers to continue monitor and assess the recent solar activity, new data shows that the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy over a three day period, March 8th -10th.

A recent flurry of eruptions on the sun did more than spark pretty auroras around the poles. NASA-funded researchers say the solar storms of March 8th through 10th dumped enough energy in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years.

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My Comment: That is a lot of juice.

Green Sky At Night, What A Delight! Plasma Eruption On The Sun Causes Spectacular Northern Lights

Spectacular: The Northern Lights bursting into a spectacular display of purple in Norway

From The Daily Mail:

In shimmering, rippling waves of green, Mother Nature's most spectacular show lights up the night sky.

Captured in the Arctic Circle above the still waters of a lake, it is an undeniably awe-inspiring display.

The haunting beauty of the Northern Lights - known as aurora borealis - is caused by massive explosions in the sun which send streams of electrically charged particles 3 million miles to the Earth.

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Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically

New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag. Credit: ©UCAR.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.

The results could help scientists better understand the swelling and shrinking of our planet's atmosphere, a phenomenon that affects the orbits of satellites and space junk.

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Mysterious Light Display Leaves Norwegians And Astronomers Puzzled

From Popular Science:

A Russian missile test or a meteor remain the top guesses for a strange spiraling light phenomenon.

A bizarre spiraling light show over Norway has raised speculations ranging from a Russian rocket test to an odd meteoric display. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute remains unsure of the phenomenon's origins, but astronomers have said that it does not appear connected to the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights.

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Islands Make Waves ... In The Sky

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color (photo-like) image on November 23, 2009. Saunders, Montagu, and Bristol Islands, part of the South Sandwich chain, all trigger V-shaped waves. Credit: NASA, Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

From Live Science:

Islands don't move much, but they can still make waves. In fact they sometimes make dramatic waves ... in the clouds.

In a new satellite image, the South Sandwich island chain triggers a series of airborne waves. The V-shaped waves fan out to the east, visible as white clouds over the dark ocean water.

The islands disturb the smooth flow of air, creating waves that ripple through the atmosphere downwind of the obstacles, NASA explained in a statement.

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Pictured: The Independence Day-Shaped Cloud Hovering In The Skies Over Moscow

Luminous: The pale halo-shaped cloud was hovering over Moscow on Wednesday

From The Daily Mail:

In what could have been a scene from the film Independence Day, a luminous ring-shaped cloud could be seen hovering over the city of Moscow last week.

The pale gold 'halo' could be seen above the Russian capital city's Western District on Wednesday, and was captured on film by stunned Muscovites.

Meteorologists rejected any theories of the supernatural however, calling it an optical effect.

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Surprise In Earth's Upper Atmosphere: Mode Of Energy Transfer From The Solar Wind

In addition to emitting electromagnetic radiation, the sun emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects Earth and other planets in the solar system. (Credit: SOHO image composite by Steele Hill (NASA))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2009) — UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.

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Solar Superstorm

An ultraviolet-wavelength picture of the sun taken by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Oct. 23, 2003.

From NASA:

October 23, 2003: Newly uncovered scientific data of recorded history's most massive space storm is helping a NASA scientist investigate its intensity and the probability that what occurred on Earth and in the heavens almost a century-and-a-half ago could happen again.

In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of Earth's inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole.

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Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm

Image from Wikipedia

From Wired Science:

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose.

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Great Ball Of Fire? No, Just A 'Sun Dog' Scampering Across The Sky

Blazing light: The flash was photographed by Matthew Pinless
near his home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

From The Daily Mail:

Matthew Pinless was sure that the streak of light he spotted in the sky while walking was more likely to be a meteor than a UFO.

In fact it was neither. The blazing ball hanging above a residential street in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is thought to be a ‘sun dog’.

The phenomenon occurs when sunlight is refracted by hexagonal-shaped ice crystals in high and cirrus clouds - and is quite common, experts say.

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Gigantic Lightning Jets Shoot From Clouds To Space

A series of still images from a captured video sequence of a gigantic jet observed near Duke University. The thunderstorm that produced this jet was about 200 miles away and is below the visible horizon. Credit: Steven Cummer

From Live Science:

Strokes of lightning flashing down towards the ground are a familiar sight during summer thunderstorms, but scientists have capture an image of a rare lightning bolt shooting out upwards from a cloud, almost to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

These bolts of upwards lightning, one type among a variety of electrical discharges now known to occur above thunderstaorms, are called gigantic jets, and were only first discovered in 2001.

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Red Sky At Night: Heavens Turn Crimson Over Britain After Russian Volcano Erupts

(Click Image to Enlarge)
Shepherd's delight: A particularly fiery red sky over fields in Leicestershire last night after an eruption at Sarychev Peak in Russia unleashed a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur. When this 'volcanic aerosol' in the stratosphere mixes with the red light of the setting sun, it produces a vivid crimson hue

From The Daily Mail:

The night skies over Britain will turn a deep shade of crimson this week as the fallout from a Russian volcano blast hits the UK.

Millions of tonnes of dust, ash and sulphur dioxide were thrown up to 30 miles into the air when Sarychev Peak on Matua Island in the Kuril Archipelago erupted last month.

The blast created what experts call a ‘volcanic aerosol’ - a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur compounds - in the stratosphere.

This scatters an invisible blue glow which, when mixed with the red light of the setting sun, produces a ‘volcanic lavender’, or vivid crimson/violet hue.

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Edge of Space Found

Photo From Near Space Sciences

From Live Science:

Hold on to your hats, or in this case, your helmets: Scientists have finally pinpointed the so-called edge of space — the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.

With data from a new instrument developed by scientists at the University of Calgary, scientists confirmed that space begins 73 miles (118 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

A lot remains very fuzzy, however, as the boundary is surrounded by a host of misconceptions and confusing, conflicting definitions.

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