In the electrical model of the solar system, all planets must contrive to supply electrons to the positively charged Sun. Mercury probably does it in a similar way to our Moon, through photoelectric and cold-cathode emission. Occasionally the emission may be strong enough at certain ‘hot spots’ to cause the anomalous glows seen on the Moon. The next planet from the Sun, Venus, has an ionosphere entwined in current ‘ropes’ from the solar wind. It causes powerful ‘super bolts’ of lightning to fly between the planet’s ionosphere and the surface. It seems the electric field at Venus’ hot surface is so strong that above a certain altitude the atmosphere hugging the surface glows with a surface discharge known as St. Elmo’s fire. Being dense plasma it reflected the radar signal from the Magellan Orbiter as if the mountains of Venus were plated with metal, much to the puzzlement of planetary scientists.
On Earth we have water clouds to charge up between the ionosphere and the Earth and spare us the super bolts of Venus. Although there are rare reports of ‘bolts from the blue,’ the Earth contrives to discharge in two stages, by lightning from ground to cloud and by glowing jets from the cloud to the ionosphere. The latter stage has only recently been recognized and the flashes given whimsical names like ‘sprites,’ ‘elves’ and ‘gnomes,’ which probably reflects the scientists’ disbelief before they were finally acknowledged. On rare occasions, a powerful lightning bolt strikes directly from the cloud tops to Earth. Such super bolts rip electrons violently from the earth and may form small-scale furrows like those seen on all other solid bodies in the solar system.
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