Normally, a lightning bolt (as we talked about before) hits the ground after a long, complex chain of events that concludes with a streamer from the ground reaching up and making contact with a descending ionization channel.
Throughout history, that's the way lightning has worked. People have not always understood the mechanism, of course; lightning's often [...]

Today we're not going to talk about lightning of the natural variety, and instead talk about lightning of the man-made variety. Specifically, we're going to talk about the Z-Machine, an enormous X-ray generator at Sandia National Laboratory.
How enormous? This enormous:

(You can click on the picture for a bigger version. Believe me, it's worth it.)
What you [...]

So, if you're over the age of six or so, you probably know that lightning tends to strike the highest point around. This is why staying under a tree during a thunderstorm is a bad idea; lightning will tend to prefer tall objects, and if you're under the tree when it gets hit, you're likely [...]

If you know anything about lightning, you probably know that you're safe from lightning inside a car–at least as long as you aren't touching anything metal.
A lot of people believe that the car's rubber tires act as an insulator, and that this is the reason a car is safe during a lightning storm. This is [...]

There are a number of different approaches used in lightning warning systems. Most lightning safety systems fall into one of two broad categories: lightning prediction and lightning detection.
Lightning Prediction
The older technique, lightning prediction, attempts to anticipate lightning strokes by using an antenna designed to sense sudden collapse in electrical field density in an area. This [...]