Like a high-tech hammer of Thor, a powerful laser can grab hold of a lightning bolt and reroute its path through the sky. In a mountaintop experiment, such a laser bent lightning toward a lightning ...

Benjamin Franklin is credited with inventing the lightning rod, and for some 270 years it has remained the main tool for protecting buildings from destructive and potentially deadly thunderbolts. But ...

Lightning rods protect buildings by providing a low-resistance path for charges to flow between the clouds and the ground. But they only work if lightning finds that path first. The actual strike is ...

Lightning is one of the most powerful forces on Earth, and try as we might, it’s tough to control... but not impossible. Early this year, a team of European scientists scaled the heights of human ...

Forest fires, power cuts and damaged infrastructure…lightning fascinates and destroys in equal measure, causing as many as 24,000 deaths a year worldwide not to mention widespread destruction. Even ...