Home favourite Juan Ayuso snatched victory on stage three of the Tour of Catalonia fractionally ahead of 2023 winner Primoz Roglic and climbed to the top of the general classification on Wednesday The UAE Team Emirates rider passed Roglic in the final metres and the Slovenian could not battle his way back in front as they sprinted across the line in a photo finish Barcelona-born Ayuso triumphed after a gruelling 218km ride from Viladecans through snow-capped hills to a mountain finish at La Molina trailing Tirreno-Adriatico winner Ayuso by six seconds are the leading contenders for the overall classification with reigning champion Tadej Pogacar not competing but here it's very important to win stages because they also come with bonus seconds and many years this race has been decided by less than 10 seconds," Ayuso told Teledeporte The 22-year-old secured 10 bonus seconds after crossing the line in just over five hours 49 minutes while Roglic took six and Soudal–Quick–Step's Landa four Thursday's stage four is another mountainous run taking riders 188.7km from Sant Vicenc de Castellet to Montserrat The seven-day race ends Sunday in Barcelona with the ascent of Montjuic to the Olympic stadium where LaLiga leaders Barcelona currently play home games An eerie red figure flashed across the sky above a thunderstorm near the south coast of France and then it was gone in the blink of an eye standing on his balcony in Sant Vicenç de Castellet in spectacular detail on the night of June 5 He was more than 150 miles (250 km) away from the storm "It was the sixth sprite that night that I could capture and the second one at this zoom level," said van der Velde "This type of sprite is often called a 'carrot.'" "The exciting thing about this one is the level of detail revealed in the sprite by zooming in on the sky above storms," van der Velde told LiveScience "You have to consider that I obtained the image from my own balcony within a small town with very basic equipment: a security camera fitted with a zoom lens attached to a laptop with detection software." motion capture software that starts recording when luminous phenomena are detected.) Their brevity and somewhat erratic nature have made sprites elusive study subjects Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox "Sprites are very difficult to observe with the naked eye, because they last no longer than the blink of an eye," van der Velde said. "And the light of the lightning flash from the distant storm top underneath is usually catching the attention instead." He added, "This is also the reason why sprites were discovered only in 1989, which is even later than the discovery of Pluto! Many people, including pilots, have seen these phenomena for decennia [decades], but without proof, scientists remained skeptical." (In 1989, cameras onboard the STS-34 space shuttle mission recorded sprites as the spacecraft passed over a thunderstorm in northern Australia.) By studying the structure of sprites, van der Velde said, scientists hope to learn more about lightning, such as cloud-to-ground flashes and so-called spider lightning, among other atmospheric topics. Scientific AmericanJeanna Bryner is managing editor of Scientific American Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University a master's degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science La Niña is dead — what that means for this year's hurricanes and weather La Niña is dead after just a few months May's full 'Flower Moon' will be a micromoon