SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO LIGHTNING

An article in the Financial Times about ongoing research at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing (ICLRT) says, “The pace of discovery has led to an outpouring of new theories about lightning. When promising-looking clouds appear, researchers from the University of Florida and the Florida Institute of Technology, which run the site, fire a rocket into them and induce a lightning flash — which they then analyze and theorize about [see photo]. The pace of discovery has led to an outpouring of new theories about lightning. For all the exotic phenomena discovered during the 1990s, the three great unsolved questions pertaining to lightning are these: How does it start? How does it move? How does it strike? Most things, in other words.” Read more.