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This isn't lightning like we think on earth. It's only a few centimeters long which is why it's never been detected before except by microphone[0].

[0] https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/11/26/at-l...

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Wouldn't it be static electricity in that case and not lightning? Not sure if this is just a technical definition thing I'm missing or if lightning just makes a cooler sounding headline.

Lightning is static electricity that builds in an atmosphere.

And a mountain is a bump on the ground. It does feel like "lightning" comes with context beyond how the charge was formed, even if it could be technically correct to say that's all it is. Of course almost nobody knows what triboelectric discharge is either, but sticking to "static electricity" fits well between the two.

Lightning is a discharge of static electricity, but a discharge of static electricity is not lightning.

<sigh>

In the atmosphere!

I think this is a mix of not having a word for this specific phenomenon, so inappropriately applying the closest, and the usual bad science reporting. They don't call it lighting in the actual paper, because not all discharge events are lightning.

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