Page 19 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - April 2024
P. 19
The Mystery of Green Ghosts Lights Solved 19
The origin of mysterious William Shakespeare’s comedy A Meteorological Agency database. Finally,
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since then, on September 21, 2019, the team detected
green ‘ghosts’ in the sky
numerous transient luminous phenomena a jellyfish-shaped red sprite during a
has been discovered have been described, all of which have storm over the Mediterranean Sea. Above
fanciful names. Elves are ring-like glows. it, there was a fleeting green ghost.
Trolls are purple jets. Sprites are flashes
Engineer María Passas Varo’s
of red, sometimes in the shape of British photographer Paul Smith
team reveals the causes of a
jellyfish. And ghosts are green lights that, describes himself as a “sprite chaser.” His
strange electrical phenomenon, on rare occasions, emerge above the colleague Hank Schyma immediately
which draws spectral figures in sprites. asked him if that ghostly green light over
storms Oklahoma was normal. Smith thought it
María Passas Varo works at the Spanish might be a camera error, but he patiently
Research Council’s Andalusia Institute of reviewed his own recordings and
American Hank Schyma, a Texan rock Astrophysics, in Granada, her hometown. discovered several similar light
singer also known as Pecos Hank, vividly She still excitedly remembers the day she phenomena. Together they decided to
remembers the day when his camera learned that singer and storm chaser name it. Smith admits that they first spent
captured an unusual ghostly image in the Hank Schyma had discovered a new several days trying to fit the acronym
sky. It was May 25, 2019, and he was transient luminous phenomenon. Passas goblin; since they couldn’t come up with
recording a gigantic storm over Varo and her colleague Justo Sanchez del anything, Schyma ended up proposing
Oklahoma. For just a few milliseconds, a Rio had already designed an instrument ghost because he intuited that the
strange greenish figure appeared high to analyze the colorful, fleeting electrical phenomena were greenish emissions
above the clouds, which he christened a discharges that appear above some storm resulting from excited oxygen. “I had
ghost; that term is also the acronym for clouds, at a height of between 40 and 90 theorized that this green color must have
“Green emissions from excited Oxygen kilometers (about 25 to 56 miles). In June some kind of oxygen involvement, as in
in Sprite Tops.” A team led by Spanish 2019, the Spanish scientists decided to nocturnal luminescence and auroras,”
engineer Maria Passas Varo has now use their sophisticated tool to try to hunt Smith recalls.
discovered the true origin of these ghosts for a green ghost in the skies over Spain.
in the sky: the presence of metals, (Continued on Page 20)
especially iron and nickel, caused by The tool is located on the patio of Dutch
interstellar dust entering the atmosphere. meteorologist Oscar van der Veld, who THE ‘X’ ZONE RADIO SHOW
works at the Polytechnic University of with
The mysterious ghosts are only one type Catalonia and lives in the Barcelona town Rob McConnell
of transient luminous phenomenon. of Castellgalí. The challenge of finding a Is Heard
These optical events were first detected ghost was daunting. “Ghosts are super Monday thru Friday
on the night of September 22, 1989, infrequent. One ghost comes from every from 10 pm - Midnight
during a storm associated with a 100 sprites,” says Passas Varo. Her on
hurricane in the United States. Because observation instrument automatically Your Hometown Radio
they were fleeting and elusive, scientist points to the area of the sky where there CLASSIC 1220 (CFAJ 1220 AM)
Dave Sentman named them sprites, after are large storms through real-time and Streamed Around the World at
Puck, the mischievous character in consultation of the National www.CLASSIC1220.ca
