If you'd told a scientist fifteen years ago that forty kilometre long, jellyfish shaped, blobs of pink plasma went shooting out of the tops of clouds and towards space they'd have laughed.
Or possibly they'd have asked what you were smoking, if you'd gotten it off 'Big Dave', and how much they could get for twenty quid (I've known a few different kinds of scientist).
Then people started taking videos like this.....
These things are called sprites, and they are huge (and still pretty badly understood) blasts of plasma that go shooting up from thunderclouds, towards space.
Which brings me onto my 'badly put profound thought for this morning': Nature is full of surprises. So we shouldn't get all surprised that another surprising natural phenomena has, er, surprised us. Especially scientists.
You know what I mean. Well, maybe not. But, if you ever see a thunderstorm from a distance at night, see if you can spot one of these. They're very brief, and they're proof positive that we've always got a lot more to learn.
Have a good morning everyone.
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