A typical stroke of lightning stretches as long as eight miles, and forms when a negatively charged region in a storm cloud begins to send out a stepped leader. This leader is met by another leader rising from the earth, allowing the cloud to discharge to the ground, reducing the negative electrical charge. That's typically [...]

Let's start with an interesting fact: A typical cloud-to-ground lightning bolt is hot. Very hot. The air surrounding a lightning stroke is superheated plasma, which can be anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. By way of comparison, the outer layer of the sun is around 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Worldwide, there are about six thousand lightning [...]

In our last post, we talked about the way lightning forms in stages, where a high electrical field will cause the formation of an ionization channel that grows in stages from a cloud toward the ground.
This same process occurs in solid materials under the influence of a large, powerful electrical field. Any time you have [...]