NASA spacecraft documents how Jupiter's lightning resembles Earth's

Data obtained by Juno is providing fresh information on how the lightning processes on Jupiter are similar to those on Earth

Hidden below the brownish ammonia clouds blanketing Jupiter are clouds that like on Earth are made of water. And like on Earth, lightning often is generated within these clouds - an eerie sight spotted by various spacecraft that have visited our solar system's largest planet, including NASA's Juno probe.

Data obtained by Juno is providing fresh information on how the lightning processes on Jupiter are similar to those on Earth despite the dramatic differences between the two planets, according to scientists.

Earth is a relatively small rocky world. Jupiter, whose namesake ancient Roman god flung lightning bolts, is a gas giant so immense that all the other planets in our solar system could neatly fit inside it - including more than 1,300 Earths.

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Tapping into five years of high-resolution data acquired by Juno's radio receiver as the spacecraft orbits Jupiter, the researchers found that the planet's lightning initiation processes pulsate with a similar rhythm to that observed inside clouds on our planet. The pulses observed on Jupiter as flashes of lightning were initiated with time separations of about a millisecond, similar to thunderstorms on Earth.

Lightning is the most powerful naturally occurring electrical source on Earth.

"Lightning is an electric discharge which is initiated inside thunderclouds. The ice and water particles inside the cloud get charged by collisions and form layers of particles with the charge of the same polarity," said planetary scientist Ivana Kolmasova of the Czech Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Prague, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature Communications.