In 2024, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick caught a glimpse at one of the most elusive atmospheric phenomena known as red sprites. These occur during particularly powerful thunderstorms and travel ...

Cosmic rays may play a role in triggering lightning, a new study suggests, offering an out-of-this-world answer to a ...

A Stanford study shows that tiny electrical charges in water droplets caused reactions that developed organic matter from ...

While previous studies say volcanic or atmospheric lightning may have triggered chemical reactions that created organic ...

But real lightning would have struck infrequently—and mostly in open ocean, where organic compounds would have quickly ...

New research suggests “microlightning” exchanges among water droplets in Earth’s early atmosphere may have sparked the ...

Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth’s oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules. Now, new research published March 14 in the ...

wirestock via Freepik While the origin of life on Earth is still up for debate, the Miller-Urey hypothesis suggests that a strike of lightning into ocean water mixed with inorganic gases may have ...

Dipteryx trees in Panama survive lightning strikes, grow taller, lose rivals, and reproduce more successfully.

Life may not have begun with a dramatic lightning strike into the ocean but ... into a mixture of gases thought to be present in Earth's early atmosphere can lead to the formation of organic ...