Scientists have now detected tiny lightning bolts on Mars for the first time. How’d they do it? Well, the microphone on NASA’s Perseverance rover was sensitive enough to pick up the sound of electrostatic.

Publishing their findings in the journal Nature, a team led by Baptiste Chide sifted through 29 hours of rover audio spanning two Martian years. They found 55 “electrical events” hiding in noise.

Each discharge starts with a microsecond-long burst of electronic interference followed by a faint shockwave. That shockwave is the only part that’s an actual sound. If you’re imagining the dramatic crackling bolts of electricity in the sky we see here on earth on a stormy day, reel that vision back a bit.

Mars has no thunderstorms, just a lot of dust storms and dust devils, rendering its lig

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