{"id":219561,"date":"2025-08-07T04:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T09:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/scientists-discover-the-explosive-chain-reaction-that-triggers-lightning"},"modified":"2025-08-07T04:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T09:26:25","slug":"scientists-discover-the-explosive-chain-reaction-that-triggers-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/scientists-discover-the-explosive-chain-reaction-that-triggers-lightning","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover the Explosive Chain Reaction That Triggers Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-the-explosive-chain-reaction-that-triggers-lightning.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lightning may look like a sudden burst from the clouds, but its true origin lies in an invisible storm of cosmic rays, X-rays, and high-energy electrons. A breakthrough study led by Penn State researchers has finally decoded this hidden process: when cosmic rays strike thunderclouds, they trigger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lightning may look like a sudden burst from the clouds, but its true origin lies in an invisible storm of cosmic rays, X-rays, and high-energy electrons. A breakthrough study led by Penn State researchers has finally decoded this hidden process: when cosmic rays strike thunderclouds, they trigger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,1522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}