Red Lightning Unveiled: 15 Shocking Discoveries That Will Electrify Your Mind!

12. Ruby Crawlers: Slow-Moving Red Electrical Discharges

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Recently found, Ruby crawlers are a type of red lightning distinguished by their slow, meandering motion across the top atmosphere. Usually occurring between 70 and 90 kilometres, these events show as elongated strands of deep red light that seem to creep across the sky at far slower than other types of lightning. The excitation of nitrogen molecules in the rarefied air of the mesosphere produces the ruby colour. Ruby crawlers differ from other forms of red lightning in their exceptionally long lifetime—some incidents last several minutes. This longer period of time lets one make more thorough observations and has produced some amazing behaviour discoveries. Ruby crawlers have been linked in recent studies to powerful atmospheric gravity waves, implying a complicated connection between mechanical and electrical processes in the top atmosphere. Furthermore noted by scientists are clusters of events where several crawlers move concurrently in various directions. This behaviour has generated conjecture regarding the function of ruby crawlers in mesosphere large-scale energy redistribution mechanisms. These mysterious events are giving fresh understanding of the mechanics of the upper atmosphere and its reaction to gravitational and electrical forces as we keep researching them.