Megalightning

ENTIRELY NEW FORMS OF LIGHTNING HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED UP TO 1000 TIMES BIGGER THAN ANY BOLT PREVIOUSLY SEEN. WHILE NORMAL LIGHTNING FIRES DOWN BELOW CLOUDS, THESE GIANT BOLTS SHOOT UP, STUNNING EXPERTS WITH IMAGES OF LIGHTNING 80 KILOMETRES HIGH.

THIS LIGHTNING, SIX TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN PASSENGER PLANES ARE DESIGNED TO WITHSTAND, MAY BE THE REAL KILLER IN A SPATE OF BAFFLING AIR DISASTERS.

Camera takes photo.

AND FOR THE FIRST TIME WE CAN REVEAL THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT SPARKED A SECRET NASA ENQUIRY.

WAS THIS THE PROOF THAT A HIGH ALTITUDE LIGHTNING STRIKE CAUSED THE CRASH OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA?

Title card:

MEGA-LIGHTNING

NARRATOR:

EACH DAY, THE EARTH IS SHAKEN BY 8 MILLION BOLTS OF THE SKY'S MOST POWERFUL FORCE: LIGHTNING.

Bolt of lightning.

NARRATOR:

ENERGY FROM ONE BOLT EXPLODES IN SPLIT SECOND, BUT COULD POWER A HOUSEHOLD FOR HALF A YEAR. AT ANY TIME, 1800 STORMS PUMMEL OUR PLANET. EACH ONE IS A GIANT BATTERY. INSIDE A STORM, WATER TURNS TO HAIL. FAILLING ICE CRASHES ON RISING DROPLET, CREATING STATIC ELECTRICITY. CHARGES OF UP TO 100 MILLION VOLTS BUILD UP. ARCS OF ELECTRICITY FIRE OUT. THIS IS LIGHTNING. MORE THAN 90 PERCENT OF ALL BOLTS FIRE WITHIN CLOUDS. BUT A HIGHLY CHARGED STORM WILL FIRE A CASCADE OF ELECTRICAL CHARGE TO EARTH, DRAWN TO THE HIGHEST POINT. A TREE OR A BLADE OF GRASS CAN TRIGGER LIGHTNING, OR EVEN A PERSON. EACH YEAR, 100O PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD DIE FROM DIRECT HIT. A LIGHTNING BOLT IS ONLY 3 CM WIDE. BUT AT 33,000 DEGREES CELCIUS, IT IS HOTTER THAN THE SURFACE OF THE SUN.

CGI lightning.

NARRATOR:

THIS HEAT EXPANDS THE SURROUNDING AIR, WHICH EXPLODES OUTWARDS AS THUNDER, THE SOUND OF LIGHTNING.

CGI lightning strike.

NARRATOR:

A LIGHTNING FLASH TRAVELS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT; IT'S THUNDER TRAVELS MUCH SLOWER. THE SHORTER THE TIME BETWEEN THE FLASH AND THE THUNDER, THE CLOSER THE LIGHTNING BOLT. FEW CLOUD TO GROUND STRIKES ARE LONGER THAN THREE KILOMETRES. AND TEXTBOOKS SAID NO LIGHTNING COULD EXIST ABOVE THE CLOUDS.

Cloud to ground lighting with measuring rod.

Walt Lyons on balcony.

NARRATOR:

BUT THEN WEATHERMAN WALT LYONS AIMED HIS CAMERA ACROSS THE COLORADO PLAINS ON JULY 6, 1993.

Mountains through Walt's eye glasses

NARRATOR:

WHAT HE SAW OVERTURNED 200 YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY IN AN INSTANT.

Green sprites images.

NARRATOR:

HE FILMED THESE VIDEO IMAGES. THEY SHOW LIGHTNING 80 KILOMETRES HIGH AND 40 KILOMETRES WIDE FIRING ABOVE THE CLOUDS. THEIR EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DISMISSED AS FANTASY. THEIR DISCOVERY SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON WHAT HAS BEEN CAUSING AIRPLANES TO FALL FROM THE SKY.

Sunrise.

Stuart Beecher lights a pipe.

NARRATOR:

THE DISCOVERY OF MEGA-LIGHTNING BEGAN WITH ORDINARY PEOPLE SEEING EXTRAORDINARY THINGS.

Stills of Beecher in name separated by light flashes.

NARRATOR:

IN 1969 STUART BEECHER WAS DEFENDING A MORTAR PIT OUTSIDE SAIGON IN SOUTH VIETNAM, WHEN A STORM BROKE.

Stuart Beecher:

There was this giant flash of lighting that reached from the ground through the base of the cloud, completed illuminated the cloud, and out the top from the ground, in this beautiful double helix pattern, that seemed to just go on forever. It was just like it was going straight into space.

Amateur photo of above cloud lightning.

STRAPLINE:

Photograph: Tudor Williams

NARRATOR:

THERE HAD EVEN BEEN PHOTOGRAPHS. THIS WAS TAKEN AT MT ISA IN AUSTRALIA, IN 1968. SCIENTISTS HAD IGNORED THE SIGHTINGS.

Skeet Vaughan flying.

NARRATOR:

SKEET VAUGHAN, A SENIOR NASA ENGINEER, MET A WITNESS WHO HAD SEEN GIANT LIGHTNING IN 1981. AS A TRAINED PILOT, VAUGHAN TOOK THE SIGHTING SERIOUSLY.

STRAPLINE:

Skeet Vaughan - NASA Engineer 1959-96

Skeet Vaughan:

I wrote an article in one of the flying magazines, and asked pilots to tell me if they'd seen any unusual lightning, or anything out of the ordinary. A number of pilots, about 19 of them, sent me letters telling me about this kind of a thing.

Pilot walks to letterbox.

NARRATOR:

PILOT LARRY PARTRIDGE WAS ONE OF THOSE WHO WROTE TO VAUGHN, REVEALING THAT HE'D SEEN GIANT LIGHTNING ABOVE THE CLOUDS GOING UP, AND NOT DOWN.

STRAPLINE:

Larry Partridge, pilot.

Larry Partridge:

All of a sudden, POW! Just a split second, this huge bolt of lightning came out of the top and disappeared into deep blue space. The captain turned to me and said, wide eyed, and said did you see that? And so I said yes, and so we turned and told the flight engineer, and he said, that's impossible. Lightning doesn't go up.

CGI blue jet.

Pilot Robin May flying.

STRAPLINE:

Robin May - pilot

Robin May:

A Strike of lightning appeared to come from the top of the cloud, went straight up, bright white, for ten or 15 thousand feet, then broke up into a lot of little fingers that went through the different colours of the spectrum, and disappeared off into space.

CGI of sprite to show what Larry sees through window of plane.

Skeet Vaughn:

But most of the pilots had said they'd never talk to people about this, they were somewhat reluctant to, in the case that they were flying at night, and they might think they were having hallucinations or problems. They didn't want to talk about it, and nobody would believe it anyway. Till you have documented evidence, a photograph or something like that.

NARRATOR:

THE PILOTS WOULD HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL HARD EVIDENCE TURNED TO SHOW THEY WERE NOT HALLUCINATING. THE PROBLEM WAS THAT FEW PEOPLE GET TO SEE ABOVE STORMS, AND THE PILOTS WHO DO RARELY CARRY CAMERAS.

Pilot flying into clouds.

Storm clouds brewing in distance.

NARRATOR:

BUT IF THE OBSERVER IS BELOW CLEAR SKIES, AND THERE IS A DISTANT STORM, WHAT IS ABOVE THUNDERCLOUDS CAN BE SEEN FROM THE GROUND.

Hands put camera on tripod.

NARRATOR:

BY CHANCE IN 1989, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTO PHYSICIST FRANZ WINKLER WAS TESTING A CAMERA IN THESE CONDITIONS.

Sunset.

NARRATOR:

HE WAS FILMING THE SKY ABOVE A STORM 200 KILOMETRES AWAY. ORDINARY LIGHTNING WAS FLASHING BELOW THE HORIZON. WHEN PROFESSOR WINKLER PLAYED BACK THE TAPE, THE SAW SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

CGI Scene and lightning pan up.

Winkler sprite.

NARRATOR:

THE CAMERA HAD RECORDED A FLASH, ABOVE THE CLOUD TOPS SHOWING TWIN PILLARS OF LIGHT. BUT THIS WAS WHERE LIGHTNING WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST.

CGI of size of image in Winkler photo.

NARRATOR:

AT 10 TIMES THE SIZE OF MT EVEREST, THE MYSTERY FLASH DWARFED ANY BOLT EVER RECORDED.

NASA mission control.

NARRATOR:

THE POSSIBILITY OF GIANT LIGHTNING CAME AT A BAD TIME FOR THE AMERICAN SPACE AGENCY, NASA.

STRAPLINE:

Atlas Military Satellite Launch 1987

NARRATOR:

THEY HAD CONTINUED THEIR COUNTDOWN ON MARCH 26, 1987, AND LAUNCHED A $100 MILLION MILITARY SATELLITE INTO STORM CLOUDS. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WOULD FORCE NASA TO FACE THE SKY'S MOST POWERFUL FORCE.

Rocket rising into clouds.

END PART 1

^^^

BEGIN PART 2

NARRATOR:

IN 1987, A $100 MILLION ROCKET HAD LIFTED INTO ORBIT FROM CAPE CANAVERAL. NASA ENGINEERS HAD DEFIED THE WEATHER AND LAUNCHED INTO A STORM. CAMERAS TRACKED THE ROCKET, UNTIL IT DISAPEARED INTO CLOUDS. WHEN THE CAMERA PANNED BACK DOWN TO THE LAUNCH PAD, A LIGHTNING BOLT STRUCK.

Lightning bolt hits ground.

NARRATOR:

THIS IS THE BOLT THAT HAD PASSED THROUGH THE ROCKET, FOLLOWING IT'S EXHAUST PLUME, AND STRUCK THE GROUND NEAR THE LAUNCH PAD.

Mission control:

We have lost telemetry, don't know quite why yet. We have no telemetry data from any source at hangar A-E.

NARRATOR:

WITH ON-BOARD COMPUTERS BURNT OUT BY LIGHTNING, THE VEHICLE WAS VEERING OFF COURSE. MISSION CONTROL REMOTELY DETONATED THE ROCKET BEFORE IT COULD CRASH INTO POPULATED AREAS.

Press conference.

NARRATOR:

ASKED IF THEY HAD CONSIDERED THE DANGERS OF LIGHTNING, NASA WERE CAUGHT OFF GUARD.

Conference reporter:

If lightning hit a rocket as it was going up, what would it do, would it knock out the electrical system?

NASA spokesman:

Well, there could, any number of things that could happen. I think at this point, I don't want to really speculate.

NARRATOR:

NASA WAS CRITICISED FOR IGNORING THE DANGERS OF LIGHTNING.

STRAPLINE:

Jim Dye, National Oceans and Atmospherics Administration

Jim Dye:

When a rocket goes up into a cloud, there is a plume of ions below it that extends 2-3 times the length of rocket. So in an essence you have a very long wire, strong fields of 10,20,30 thousand volts per meter. You can generate the equivalent of 1 million volts. So you get a discharge then through the rocket, a plume that then triggers the lightning. In the worse case it could actually potentially blow the rocket up.

Winkler flash.

NARRATOR:

WHEN A MYSTERY FLASH WAS FILMED IN 1989, NASA HAD REASON TO FEAR A NEW FORM OF LIGHTNING THAT COULD BLOW UP A ROCKET HIGH ABOVE THE CLOUDS.

Skeet walking camera.

NARRATOR:

NASA ASKED SKEET VAUGHAN TO FIND EVIDENCE THAT THE PHENOMENA WAS REAL. HE SEARCHED FOR SIMILAR FLASHES IN NASA'S ARCHIVE OF STORMS FILMED FROM EARTH'S ORBIT.

Skeet in front of space shuttle.

Skeet Vaughan:

We were able to go through probably 17 or twenty hours, and you had to go through each video frame, and you have to identify the video frame, and compare it to what you know to be out there.

Skeet and Bill in front of tapes.

Skeet Vaughan jogs tapes and catches images.

Stills of Skeet's images.

NARRATOR:

BY 1992, THE DETECTIVE WORK HAD TURNED UP STARTLING IMAGES. THEY SHOWED THE EDGE OF THE EARTH. BRIGHT COLUMNS FIRED UPWARDS 70 KILOMETRES FROM THE CLOUDS, TOWERING BY THE HORIZON.

Skeet Vaughan:

We found a total of probably nineteen of those things on different shuttle flights, over time.

NARRATOR:

NASA FEARED THEY MIGHT BE MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE ORDINARY LIGHTNING THAT HAD PREVIOUSLY HIT THEIR ROCKET. A RACE BEGAN TO FIND OUT IF THESE WERE GIANT BOLTS. AND IF THEY COULD BRING DOWN THE SPACE SHUTTLE.

Sprite from space.

NARRATOR:

NASA TURNED TO WALT LYONS, A WORLD EXPERT IN THE DETECTION OF DISTANT LIGHTNING STRIKES. NASA HAD USED HIS SKILLS TO MAKE LAUNCHES SAFER AFTER THE 1987 DISASTER. THEIR ROCKET SAFETY TEAM NOW SHARED THEIR CONCERNS OVER THE NEW DISCOVERY.

Walt Lyons:

It appeared this whole new form of lightning not going down but going up.

Pan of Colorado plain view from Walt's place.

Walt Lyons:

Naturally the safety people were concerned and said, we'd better find out about this.

Walt on Roof showing camera.

NARRATOR:

WALT LYON'S OBSERVATORY ON YUCCA RIDGE WAS PERFECT FOR HUNTING LIGHTNING. COLORADO'S CLEAR SKIES OFFERED VIEWS ABOVE STORMS UP TO A THOUSAND MILES AWAY IN TORNADO ALLEY. THE PRIARIE STATES HIT BY THE WORST OF THE 20 MILLION LIGHTNING BOLTS THAT STRIKE THE UNITED STATES EACH YEAR. NASA GAVE LYONS THE JOB TO FILM ABOVE STORMS TO SEE IF THE MYSTERY FLASHES MIGHT BE A THREAT. HE ORDERED A REMOTE CAMERA TO MOUNT ON TOP OF HIS OBSERVATORY.

Walt Lyons:

This very camera here came on 6th July 1993. We took it out of the box that very evening, we put it on a tripod and lo and behold, it was a massive thunderstorm going on out in Kansas, about 300 kilometers away. It was lighting up the whole sky and I said, aha, this looks good, and I just sat and waited.

NARRATOR:

LYONS SET UP THE CAMERA AND LINKED IT BACK TO THE VIDEO RECORDER IN HIS VIEWING ROOM.

Walt Lyons:

It was eleven o'clock and it was really fun to watch the lightning on this video enhanced image. Looking at it, that's impressive that's nice, twelve o'clock, nice but not much was happening.

Lightning storm to music.

NARRATOR:

LYONS WAS WEARY FROM MONITORING THE STORM, WHEN HE SUDDENLY SAW FLASHES THAT DID NOT BEHAVE LIKE ORDINARY LIGHTNING

Walt Lyons:

Then: Bing! I saw something on the screen and said, what was that? And then another, and I said, oh boy. By the time the sun came up around four thirty, we had seen two hundred and fifty of these bings. We just picked the right light with the right storm, the perfect location. It was classic beginners luck.

NARRATOR:

IN ONE NIGHT WALT LYONS HAD PROVED THE PHENOMENA WAS REAL. BUT IT STILL HAD NO NAME.

Walt Lyons:

A friend suggested calling them Sprites, which shows up in Shakespeare's plays. I said, that's a beautiful name, that's perfect, because it's a sort of fleeting, ephemeral type of creature, and it doesn't imply something about the physics.

Matt Heavner on tarmac with plane.

NARRATOR:

A YEAR AFTER WALT LYONS' DISCOVERY, A UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA TEAM SET OUT TO PHOTOGRAPH THE SPRITES FROM THE AIR, UP CLOSE AND IN COLOUR. STUDENT MATT HEAVNER VOLUNTEERED FOR THE MISSION.

Matt Heavner:

They basically needed someone to operate the cameras and hit record on the VCR and figure out where to fly and things like that.

NARRATOR:

THE FLIGHTS TOOK PLACE ON THE NIGHT OF AMERICA'S FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATIONS.

Fireworks.

Storms and sprites.

Matt Heavner:

In term of danger that may be associated with the sprites, since we were in aeroplanes flying around the storms, there was certainly a danger to us, and in general, the pilots were more worried about that than we were, so we trusted their judgment enough to keep us far enough from the storms that we weren't in danger

NARRATOR:

AS THE FIREWORKS EXPLODED BELOW, MATT HEAVNER'S CAMERA CAPTURED WHAT NO ONE HAD SEEN BEFORE. THE SPRITES WERE COLOURED A VIVID BLOOD RED.

Matt Heavner:

I remember a few storms where we were seeing sprites maybe 3 or 4 times a minute and that was pretty exciting.

NARRATOR:

IN ONE NIGHT, THE LIGHTNING HUNTERS HAD BAGGED HUNDREDS OF IMAGES THAT HAD REVEALED THE TRUE COLOUR OF SPRITES. THEY WERE RED AND BLUE NEON-TYPE GLOWS, A SIGN THAT SPRITES MIGHT BE EXPLOSIONS OF ELECTRICITY EXCITING GASES IN THE HIGH ATMOSPHERE. FROM THE GROUND OBSERVATORY AT COLORADO, WALT LYONS FILMED ANOTHER PECULIARITY. THE SPRITES APPEARED TO BE DANCING ACROSS THE CLOUD TOPS.

CGI dancing sprites.

NARRATOR:

BUT WERE THE SPRITES JUST A TRICK OF THE LIGHT? ORDINARY LIGHTNING GAVE WARNING OF ITS POWER WITH THE SOUND OF THUNDER. IF SPRITES MADE A SIMILAR SOUND, IT WOULD PROVE THEM TO BE MORE THAN A MIRAGE.

Walt Lyons:

A sprite is very implosive: BOOM! Like that, which means a lot of air is potentially being heated and/or pushed round so I wondered, could there be some analogy to thunder produced by a sprite?

Dr Alfred Beddard.

Walt Lyons:

So I knew Al Beddard in Boulder here.

Dr Beddard walks into sensor area.

NARRATOR:

DR ALFRED BEDDARD, WHO WOULD HUNT FOR SPRITE THUNDER, HAD BEEN A GUARDIAN OF WORLD SECURITY DURING IN THE COLD WAR.

Narrator of Fifties propaganda film:

If the communist bloc does attack, our radar sites and observers will sound the alert.

Atom bomb explosion.

Atom blast.

NARRATOR:

DR BEDDARD'S AUDIO ARRAY NEAR BOULDER, COLORADO, CAN HEAR THE FREQUENCIES UNDETECTABLE BY HUMAN EARS CALLED INFRA-SOUND.

Sea and clouds before atom test.

Countdown:

Three, two, one.

NARRATOR:

UNTIL THE ADVENT OF SATELLITES, HIS SYSTEM WAS THE MAIN WARNING OF ROGUE ATOM BOMB TESTS. HE CAN DETECT SOUND FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD. IF HE COULD MEASURE INFRA-SOUND FROM SPRITES, IT WOULD SHOW THEY HAD ENOUGH POWER TO FIRE OUT ON THE SAME SPECTRUM AS AN ATOM BOMB.

Dr Beddard looks at screen.

Beddard:

We detected sounds from sprites...these were detected here in Boulder

DR BEDDARD CAN MAKE THE SUB-AUDIBLE SOUND OF THE SPRITE HEARD, BY PLAYING IT BACK THROUGH A PROGRAMME IN HIS COMPUTER.

Beddard leaves detector fence.

Dr. Beddard:

There's a very very loud vicious rumbling and all of this is sub-audible but when you play it back at high speeds, you wouldn't want to get near something like that.

Sprite explodes with infra-sound thunder recording.

NARRATOR:

NO COMMUNIST ATOM BOMB HAD ESCAPED DR BEDDARD'S INFRA-SONIC ARRAY. NOW RED SPRITES MIGHT BE TRACKED FAR AWAY, EVEN THOSE THAT FLASHED DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS. THE SPRITES COULD BE HEARD. THEY NEEDED TO BE EXAMINED IN GREATER DETAIL. PROFESSOR UMRAN INAN, A LEADING PHYICIST OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY, WOULD UNLEASH HIS STUDENTS TO PEER INSIDE THEIR FIERY HEARTS.

Professor Inan:

So I encouraged one of our students. Elizabeth Gherken. I said, Elizabeth why don't we do telescopic measures of this?

Elizabeth Gherken in big telescope.

Close up of inside of sprites.

Professor Inan:

What we saw in the first few images of some sprites at least, were consisting of just a whole lot of hundreds of filaments forming the body of the sprite.

Inan looks into telescope.

NARRATOR:

INAN'S TELESCOPE HELPED PROVE THAT A SPRITE, WHICH AT FIRST WAS THOUGHT TO SHOOT UP, ACTUALLY FIRES DOWNWARDS.

CGI lightning channels.

NARRATOR:

THEY WERE NOT A SINGLE BOLT, BUT IN A MULTITUDE OF INTER-LACED LIGHTNING CHANNELS. THE PICTURE WAS BEING COMPLETED.

Pan up to cloud in CGI and see stopped lightning bolt.

NARRATOR:

TO SEE GIANT LIGHTNING, TIME MUS