Cosmic rays may offer an out-of-this-world answer to a long-standing mystery about lightning on Earth, a new study suggests.
Thunderstorms are exceedingly common; a staggering 3 million lightning strikes occur on Earth every day, according to the U.K. Met Office. But even though lightning is ubiquitous, scientists still don't fully understand what triggers it. Now, a new study by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory suggests that one driver of lightning may have an extraterrestrial origin.
