<p>Fascinating “red sprites“, those huge red plasma discharges seen high above thunderstorm clouds when ordinary cloud-to-ground lightning is happening below. Humans rarely saw these sprites, even though they are flashes of light tens of miles high. But they are dim in comparison to things going on around them, and they are very very brief—on the order of hundredths of a second. The first photograph of a red sprite, confirming their existence, wasn’t taken until 1989</p>