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Published online 14 March 2002 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news020311-6
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Giant blue jet caught on film
Blue jets connect Earth's electric circuit.
Video images captured in Puerto Rico suggest that blue flashes of light, much like lightning, feed energy from thunderstorms up into the Earth's ionosphere - a blanket of electrically charged air some 70 kilometres above the ground1.
Some researchers suspect that such phenomena may also fix nitrogen for plants to use and interact with the ozone layer2.
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