The existence of lightning remains a mystery to atmospheric physics. Austria has given us a clue to solve it
It seems unbelievable, but in the middle of 2025 one of the most common and violent phenomena of nature continues keeping many secrets. This is the case of raywhich we know how to protect ourselves from and we know that Franklin had very right with your kite. But if we ask an atmospheric physicist what exactly detonates the first spark inside a cloud to start the download, you’ll probably shrug your shoulders. The discovery. We would expect the answer to this classic meteorology question in the sky itself, but in reality it seems to be in a laboratory in Austria. It has been here where they have achieved something that seems like magic: using lasers to trap microscopic particles in the air, and almost by accident, discovering a charging mechanism that could be the ‘missing link’ in the formation of lightning in our sky. What we knew. For lightning to strike, it is necessary that there is a monstrous electric field that breaks the resistance of air, something that has a name: dielectric breakdown. The problem is that when we measure the electric fields inside a thundercloud, the numbers don’t add up: They are too low to initiate lightning on their own. This means that scientists have long suspected that the secret was in the aerosols and ice crystals that collide within a cloud. And the theory is quite clear: if a small particle could accumulate enough charge, then it has the ability to create a micro-electric field around it so intense that it would start a chain reaction. The problem is that studying a microscopic ice grain in the middle of a storm is impossible, since we can be next to it and we cannot lower the cloud to the ground either. That is why this is where this research comes in, which has found a high-tech solution with optical tweezers. The experiment. To find the answer, a 532 nm green laser was used to make lift a silica sphere just a micron in diameter. But… Why? In this case, the initial objective was to measure forces precisely, but they encountered something very strange: the laser itself that held the particle was electrically charging it. Far from being a mistake, they realized that they had in front of them a perfect tool to simulate the atmosphere in miniature. It was no longer necessary to go to a cloud to analyze it. In this way, they began to charge a particle with so much static electricity that it caused a dielectric breakdown in the air around them, discharging themselves suddenly. They had literally created a controlled micro-ray in the laboratory. The authors of the study explicitly suggest that this system is an ideal model to study the electrification of aerosols and clouds. Its importance. Until now, studying these phenomena required getting into a storm-chasing plane or relying on computer simulations. But now we have the ability to simulate these conditions in a controlled way. And it is also ideal to understand why sometimes the sky seems like it is going to break in our own heads. Images | Michael Mancewicz In Xataka | What is a dry storm: when the sky throws lightning, but the rain never reaches the ground
