[aruanan]

Keep in mind that these plasma instabilities 1. are generally not seen in lightning and 2. that the carvings are nearly all oriented to have been done by a viewer looking toward the south pole, 3. they’re all over the world and number in the millions, and 4. that their orientation/foreshortening corresponds to a viewpoint by latitude on a global scale. None of the last 3 could be accounted for by a purely local phenomenon.

[justa-hairyape]

From what I gather, when these catastrophic events were occurring, they was a distinct south pole and north pole orientation to the plasma flow. So very possible that while they looked south at the pretty figures, the north was getting hammered.

At any rate, lighting itself has been shown to make these types of figures far up in the sky. Sprites. A recent discovery. Now could these sprites become more visible if the magnitude of the lighting increased ?