For the first time, scientists were able to show they can bend lightning from a storm with a laser. The project, 20 years in the making, required a super powerful laser to be shot into the sky. The ...

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 ...

Last year marked the 270th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod — but it’s more than a relic of history. The Franklin rod remains in use today because the simple design exploits some ...

With a high-speed camera and the luck of being in the right place at the right time, physicist Marcelo Saba, a researcher at Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), and PhD candidate Diego ...

Brazilian researchers captured on camera the brief moment when lightning rods on buildings released an upward discharge to attract incoming lightning. By Nicholas Bakalar Benjamin Franklin invented ...