As we stood before the rich carvings, the bas-relief, and mediæval tracery of an old cathedral in a European city, our eyes wandered upward, beyond the gargoyles, beyond the fretwork, and finally ...

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 ...

Lightning rods have been used to guide lightning strikes for centuries, but now scientists have demonstrated something a bit more advanced than a humble metal stick. Beaming a high-powered laser into ...

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Playwright Tom Stoppard, in Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead, provides one of the best definitions of science: “The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the ...

I had been noticing a whole series of lightning rods mounted on roof peaks at a nearby shopping mall. They all looked like this: Figure 1 Lightning rod mounted on roof peak. I wondered what purpose ...

A group of scientists have created a high-power laser beam that they claim lightning will follow for a period of time. Physicists have published a new study in the scientific journal Nature Photonics ...