Pilots have reported strange flashes of light above thunderstorms for some time. It wasn't until the late 1980s, however, that scientists began taking these reports seriously. Once they began studying these lights, researchers found a number of new phenomena. Red sprites, diffuse blobs of red light that stretch from 25 miles to 55 miles in altitude. These new forms of lightning can be quite bright, but they are subliminally brief, existing for only a few thousandths of a second.
Elves are the shortest lived, lasting significantly less than a millisecond.
They are so quick that scientists aren't certain that they can be seen with the naked eye. But if they can be seen, they should look red, Inan says. Elves are also too brief to register on most video cameras, which use electronic light detectors with a time resolution of 16 milliseconds. They can only detect elves that are unusually bright, the scientist says. In 1995 a group of Japanese scientists produced the first direct evidence that elves exist.