A lightning bolt that touched the edge of space is undergoing investigation by scientists

Oklahoma was hit with a tempest straight from The Twilight Zone on May 14, 2018. Instead of scattering jagged lightning bolts all over the Earth, the clouds that powered this storm spit lightning 50 miles up, grazing the edge of the ionosphere.

One of nature's most mysterious atmospheric phenomena: A gigantic jet - would soon be described as a violent, backward surge of electricity. Lightning bolts attack in an opposite direction from giant jets, which are simply luminous beams.

Their downward-facing counterparts, on the other hand, are much more powerful, and sometimes even threaten space vehicles or other technology floating in our planet's orbit. There was an intense feeling to this one in particular.

This is considered to be the most powerful lightning bolt studied to date, with an estimated 300 coulombs of electrical charge, a hundred times more than average lightning bolts. Scientists have discovered several of these strange forces in the last two decades, but many of them came from accidental sightings made by the public.

For example, a violet streak was spotted from the air over Bhadrak, India, and a third near the summit of Shikengkong mountain, China, was detected at night by a camera. A NASA experiment was added to the International Space Station in 2013 to provide an improved view of the scene above cloud tops so we could see giant jets in action more quickly.

Despite this, there are few observing systems specifically designed for the search in the science community. There are several relevant science instruments in the state that were in close proximity to this extreme event, such as satellite networks and lightning mapping systems that detect what is known as 'very high-frequency signals.

One citizen scientist in the area even snapped a low-light photo of it. To paint a detailed picture of what happened four years ago in the swirling Oklahoman sky, a team of scientists collected as much data about the jet as possible.

A press release from Georgia Tech Research Institute said Levi Boggs, a research scientist at the institute and author of a paper about the structure published Aug. 3 in Science Advances, 'we were able to map this gigantic jet in three dimensions with very high-quality data.'

A three-dimensional structure is important for decoding gigantic jets since their ascent from clouds often obscures their view. The level of detail we saw was unprecedented, and we were able to see very high-frequency sources above the cloud top,' Boggs said. In addition, those VHF signals contained a wealth of information about gigantic jetliners.

A combination of leaders and streamers produces lightning bolts from thunderstorm clouds. A leader is formed when two electrical charge differences result in lightning, and streamers can be found at the very tip of each bolt as it develops. Leaders form the bulk of discharges generated within the stormy cloud, but these forces work together to propagate electricity.

First and foremost, Oklahoma's researchers determined that the huge jet-producing leaders and streamers were found above the thunderstorm cloud rather than near the bottom as they are normally located.

As well as demonstrating that the VHF observed by lightning networks is generated by streamers ahead of the leader, the study authors noted that the radio and optical data provide the first clear evidence that this is the case.

It's above the cloud top where those cold streamers propagate, said Boggs. In the lower ionosphere, they propagate to an altitude of 50-60 miles, forming a direct electrical connection between cloud tops and the lower atmosphere.'

Aside from this, the team investigated several other fascinating giant jet dynamics and even came up with one possible reason for why these odd beams spurt out in the first place. Boggs said records collected from the Oklahoma event show suppression of cloud-to-ground discharges for whatever reason.

It may relieve the excess negative charge in the cloud in the absence of the lightning discharges we normally observe.'