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blue filter on the spacecraft's main camera recorded the lightning flashes

scientists then exaggerated the blue tint in order to pin down the lightning's location and size

analysis of the new images revealed that the energy from the visible lightning flashes alone could have spiked up to 3 billion watts over one second

on par with some of the strongest lightning flashes on Earth.  

the lightning on Saturn was spotted across a region 100 miles (160 kilometers

Cassini spotted eight daytime lightning flashes on Saturn, five in one part of the storm and three in an another

storm wrapped completely around Saturn at its peak and is the longest-lived storm ever seen on the ringed planet. It began in December 2010 and lasted about 200 days, finally sputtering out in late June 2011

mystery that remains is why the daytime Saturn lightning only turned up in Cassini's blue imaging filter

Scientists aren't sure if that means the lightning is actually blue in color, or if it's due to a short exposure time of the camera that helps the camera filter detect the lightning

results “suggest that lightning has its own unique effect on headache

how exactly lightning might trigger headaches

there are a number of possible explanations

Electromagnetic waves emitted from lightning could trigger headaches

lightning produces increases in air pollutants like ozone, and can cause release of fungal spores that might lead to migraine

while the study sheds light on the apparent link between lightning and headaches, “the exact mechanisms through which lightning and/or its associated meteorologic factors trigger headache are unknown

Previous experiments confirmed that femtosecond laser could produce ultrashort filaments of ionized gas that act like electrical guide

Further studies revealed that these filaments could function over long distances, potentially greater than 50 meters.

of new experiments

research team sent a laser beam skimming past a spherical electrode to an oppositely charged planar electrode

laser stripped away the outer electrons from the atoms along its path

a plasma filament that channeled an electrical discharge from the planar electrode to the spherical one

researchers added a longer, pointed electrode to their experiment

Without the laser, the discharge obeyed this rule and always struck the taller, pointed electrode

With the laser, however, the discharge was redirected, following the filaments and striking the spherical electrode instead

even after the initial path of the discharge began to form

approximately 100 miles (200 kilometers) in diameter when it exits the tops of the clouds

scientists deduce that the lightning bolts originate in the clouds deeper down in Saturn's atmosphere where water droplets freeze

analogous to where lightning is created in Earth's atmosphere.

In one composite image, they recorded five flashes, and in another, three flashes

joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the collaboration between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

NASA has a long-standing partnership with the LEGO company

Juno and the minifigures are scheduled to arrive in July 2016 and orbit Jupiter for a year (33 revolutions) before intentionally crashing into the giant gas planet

04 August 2011

The trio resemble the typical small toys that LEGO sells, but are made out of metal.

Jupiter (who was the equivalent of "Zeus" to the Greeks) drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief

Juno was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature

Juno spacecraft will also look beneath the clouds to help NASA understand the planet's structure and history.

Juno holds a magnifying glass "to signify her search for the truth,"

husband holds a lightning bolt

third LEGO crew member, Galileo Galilei, made several important discoveries about Jupiter

first to point a telescope at the sky to make astronomical observations and discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter — named the Galilean moons in his honor.

minifigure Galileo has his telescope with him for the journey to Jupiter.

basically the size of the normal LEGO figures

made out of aluminum, very special aluminum and they have been prepared in a very special way

space-grade aluminum

testing to make sure that they fit on our spacecraft in a way that is like our other science instruments."

mini-metal statues are joined on the spacecraft by another "special passenger," one

2.8-inch by 2-inch (71 mm by 51 mm) plaque also made of flight-grade aluminum is bonded to Juno's propulsion bay with a spacecraft-grade epoxy. The graphic on the plaque shows a self-portrait of Galileo. The plaque also includes — in Galileo's own hand — a passage he made in 1610 of observations of Jupite

Galileo's text included on the plaque reads as follows: "On the 11th it was in this formation -- and the star closest to Jupiter was half the size than the other and very close to the other so that during the previous nights all of the three observed stars looked of the same dimension and among them equally afar; so that it is evident that around Jupiter there are three moving stars invisible till this time to everyone."

Brief fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field have been detected before many earthquakes in the past 50 years

Friedemann Freund, a crystallographer at San Jose State University

in the weeks before a magnitude-5.4 quake struck about 15 kilometers northeast of San Jose in October 2007, an instrument near the epicenter sensed a number of unusual magnetic pulses

Those blips became more frequent as the day of the earthquake approached, Freund says

recently, prior to several medium- to moderate-sized quakes in Peru, two sensitive magnetometers recorded the same sort of pulses

how such pulses could be generated

suggest that these blips stem from microscopic changes in crystals in rocks under seismic stress deep within Earth

In many types of rocks, particularly volcanic rocks that have substantial amounts of water locked inside them, crystals are chock-full of oxygen-oxygen bonds called peroxy bonds

(These bonds formed long ago, after chemical changes split some of the water molecules, freeing the hydrogen atoms to bond together and then diffuse out of the rocks as gas.)

When those rocks are squeezed, say, by the sides of a fault zone scraping past one another, some of the peroxy bonds break

Those broken bonds release negatively charged electrons, which remain trapped in place, and create positively charged “holes” in the crystal

his team propose that the same process might be happening within Earth’s crust

As stress on large volumes of rock builds in advance of an impending quake, many, many of these electrical holes are created inside them

the mass migration of such holes that creates the large electrical currents responsible for generating the low-frequency magnetic pulses that make their way to detectors on Earth’s surface

they say

some critics of his model have proposed

lightning

as an alternative explanation

he notes, with data from the two sensors in Peru he and his colleagues were able to pinpoint the strongest of those pulses as originating within a few kilometers of the epicenters of subsequent quakes

For now, Freund admits, the team’s model is preliminary: The paper has been submitted to a journal and is now being reviewed by other scientists.

two instruments aren’t sufficient to pinpoint the location of an event; to truly “triangulate” an event you need at least three sensors

“I’m concerned that the pulses are not originating deep within the Earth.”

“This paper only makes sense if the observations [of magnetic pulses] are good,”

John Ebel, a seismologist at Boston College, who wasn’t involved in the research

the blips may have some inexplicable humanmade origin

Decades ago

his Boston-based magnetometers started picking up a series of odd pulses every morning.

Eventually

identified

It was the engineers cranking up Boston’s trolley cars at a rail yard a few kilometers away from the instruments

Even if the magnetic pulses originate within Earth along seismic zones under stress, Freund says, the blips don’t always foretell a quake

It’s more likely to be the pattern of pulses—and, in particular, changes in their size and frequency—that Freund and his colleagues say might offer scientists a crystal ball for impending temblors