The power of tiny flashes
To capture the microlightning resulting from chemical reaction—which are too faint for the human eye to see—the team used high-speed cameras. Despite their small size, these flashes or sparks held a lot of energy.
Next, the researchers tested their effect. They sprayed room-temperature water into a mixture of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, ammonia, and methane (gases believed to have existed on early Earth). As expected, microlightning naturally occurred when the water droplets interacted with the gas mixture