Is there such thing as a "Baseball shaped lightning bolt"?  Also, how does lightning form and how fast it go's
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.   There is something called ball lightning. It drifts slowly along and can release its energy by exploding. I read that it had been reproduced in the lab using super high voltage generators.\n.    The light from a lightning bolt travels at the speed of light but the lightning bolt travels much slower. A lightning bolt consists of ionized atoms physically moveing through the air from the cloud toward the ground and a charge comeing up from the ground to meet it. I believe the whole process takes one hundreth of a second.
368105
There are four ways a person can get injured from lightning: a direct strike, "splashes" (when the lightning bounces off something and strikes you), ground strikes (when lightning strikes the ground and then you conduct the electricity), and EMP waves (i don't know what this is). You have a 1 in 3000 chance of being hurt by lightning, and a surge protector lowers that odds even more. So according to the fact that chances are pretty low, I'd say it's safe to stay on the computer.
260605
The lightning bolt, which produces the thunder, can be over a mile long.  Sound only travels a mile every 5 seconds or so.  Thus, the thunder produced by different parts of the bolt can reach your ear at noticeably different times. We perceive this difference as drawn out, or rolling, thunder.
619535
Technically, you CAN shoot lightning from your hand, if you get charged with an extremely high static charge. The problem is, you are very likely to get burned in the process. Furthermore, you can't just shoot lightning from point A to point B. Lightning always follows the path of least resistance between two opposite charges. \n\nTherefore, in order to shoot lightning TO someone, you would BOTH have to be charged and with opposite charges, in which case the discharge (lightning) would connect you and him (and you'd both be burned). Alternatively, he would have to the closest object to you so that the lightning would follow the path of least resistance (=shortest) to him.\n\nNaturally, in order to carry such a high charge, you would have to be insulated from everything else, too.
15170
Lightning creates thunder, by rapidly heating the surrounding air. The heated air expands explosively and compresses the air immediately around the heated area.
442259
No it is not possible at this time and I doubt anyone will ever attempt it for a couple of reasons.  From NASA's webpage you can read the rest by clicking on my sources link\n\n1. Most of the power in lightning is dissipated as thunder and light, which cannot be easily harnessed to generate electric power.\n2. However, even just the electrical current of lightning is considerable -- 20,000 amps on average, the same as 100 steel welders. But the power is on for only a brief fraction of a second, so the total power is actually small, only enough to power a 100-watt light bulb for six months.\n3. The huge surge of electrical current over very brief times makes storing the energy impractical.\n4. Lightning strikes to specific locations are infrequent and inconsistent. This makes scheduling power availability impractical.\n5. Lightning can be very damaging. The collection systems have to be incredibly robust, which would drive up costs. Lightning is also very dangerous, making it tough on the collection system workers.\n6. Lightning would have to be collected over a huge area, making the system impractically expensive.\n\n#3 Its saying that lightning comes with an extreme burst of energy in a very short amount of time.  When it comes to electricity it takes awhile to build up, electricity created by a damn for example is created by the water and the turbines, it builds up slowly and is put into its reserve where ppl then draw from it.  If there was to be a massive spike were the water all of a sudden speed up to even 100mph the turbines would overheat and become useless.  Imagine charging a battery, instead of putting it on a charger and gradually letting it build up you just zapped it with a tazer or something.  Its not going to charge its going to explode.  Therefore it is impractical to store it becuase we have nothing that could take such a massive amount of energy in such a short time
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Well electricity needs a path to travel in. Electricity can flow in wires, or other conductors, like a plasma, which consists of charged particles; that is, the electrons have been stripped off the atoms because they are so energetic, leaving just a seething collection of positive and negative particles (said to be "ionized"). In a lightning strike, a path of charged particles extends between the cloud and the ground, or some other object near the ground like a tree or a lightning rod or building (or sometimes between one cloud and another). The electricity in lightning follows this charged path. \n\nIf you can use a powerful laser or some other technique to form an ionized path in the air, then electricity can follow that ionized path, just like it does in lightning (or in Van de Graff generator experiments).
183433
Try:\nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm\nAlso:\nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/question182.htm\nand\nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/question646.htm
227733
There is already a device that can collect electrical discharges, made earlier in the turn of the century, they are called leyden jars, Modern day terminology call these devices Capacitors or battery. The innovation from the leyden jars to the rechargeable battery took centuries to develop. The reason why they do not build massive structures for the purpose you described is because simply that lightning is an uncontrollable energy source. its random unexpected occurrence, its unstable and erratic voltage potentials makes it very dangerous and an inefficient source of stable energy. Perhaps why electromagnetic generators are built and are still being used as of today to supply a more controllable source of electrical energy. Its flexibility of use with hydro-electrical plants, wind farms, and fossil fuel plant, make the electrostatic generators more advantageous to deal with than lightning alone in producing electricity.\n\nOther alternative energy to consider are nuclear, solar, hydrgen fuel cells, and geo-thermal energy.\n~meow
1132815
This is taken from an article I used with my earth science students.\n\nOver 1,000 people get struck by lightning every year in the United States, and over 100 of them die as a result of the strike. Lightning is not something to toy with. \nIf you are caught outside in a storm, always look for appropriate shelter. Do not take any chances -- lightning can use you as a path to the earth just as easily as it can use any other object. Appropriate shelter would be a building or a car. If you do not have anywhere to go, then you should avoid taking shelter under trees. Trees attract lightning. Put your feet as close together as possible and crouch down with your head as low as possible without touching the ground. \n\nNever lay down on the ground. After lightning strikes the ground, there is an electric potential that radiates outward from the point of contact. If your body is in this area, current can flow through you. You never want the current to have the ability to pass through your body. This could cause cardiac arrest, not to mention other organ damage and burns. By making your body as low to the ground as possible and minimizing the amount of your body in contact with the ground, you can lower the possibility of a lightning-related injury. If a strike were to occur near you, the current would have a much more difficult time flowing through your body in this position. \n\nIf you are indoors, stay off the phone. If you must call someone, use a cordless phone or cell phone. If lightning strikes the phone line, the strike will travel to every phone on the line (and potentially to you if you are holding the phone). \n\nStay away from plumbing pipes (bath tub, shower). Lightning has the ability to strike a house or near a house and impart an electrical charge to the metal pipes used for plumbing. This threat is not as great as it used to be, because PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is often used for indoor plumbing these days. If you are not sure what your pipes are made of, wait it out.\n\nA couple of misconceptions:\nRubber tires keep you safe in a car because they do not conduct electricity.\nNope. In strong electric fields, rubber tires actually become more conductive than insulating. The reason you are safe in a car is because the lightning will travel around the surface of the vehicle and then go to ground. This occurs because the vehicle acts like a Faraday cage. Michael Faraday, a British physicist, discovered that a metal cage would shield objects within the cage when a high potential discharge hit the cage. The metal, being a good conductor, would direct the current around the objects and discharge it safely to the ground. This process of shielding is widely used today to protect the electrostatic sensitive integrated circuits in the electronics world. \n\nThe tallest objects in a storm always get struck by lightning.\nIt's true that taller objects are closer to the clouds, but as discussed previously, lightning can strike the ground at a close distance to a tall object. Taller objects may have a higher possibility of a strike, but where lightning is concerned, the strike path is not predictable.
500891
At a guess I would say it was St. Elmos Fire.... No, not the movie... St. Elmos Fire is Ball Lightning. While not a whole lot is known about ball lightning it is very cool. I wish I had more information for you.
96759
Some of these answers are good ones.  Clouds are charged, scientists can't agree why.  The tops of clouds are positively charged, the bottoms are negatively charged.  The negative charge at the bottom of the cloud repels negative ions in the earth's surface, which gives it a positive charge.  There are things called leaders and step leaders that seek out a path to relieve the difference in electrical potential.  As they reach out, then 'streamers' are generated on the opposing surface, like the ground, in response to the growing electrical field.  When these two meet this prepares the way for a lightning strike.  Usually this happens from cloud-to-ground, but it can also happen ground-to-cloud.\n\nOne of the best descriptions of how lightning strikes work can be found at http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning5.htm
157859
The first process in the generation of lightning is the forcible separation of positive and negative charge carriers within a cloud or air. The mechanism by which this happens is still the subject of research, but one widely accepted theory is the polarisation mechanism. This mechanism has two components: the first is that falling droplets of ice and rain become electrically polarised as they fall through the atmosphere's natural electric field, and the second is that colliding ice particles become charged by electrostatic induction. Once charged, by whatever mechanism, work is performed as the opposite charges are driven apart and energy is stored in the electric fields between them. The positively charged crystals tend to rise to the top, causing the cloud top to build up a positive charge, and the negatively charged crystals and hailstones drop to the middle and bottom layers of the cloud, building up a negative charge. Cloud-to-cloud lightning can appear at this point. Cloud-to-ground lightning is less common. Cumulonimbus clouds that do not produce enough ice crystals usually fail to produce enough charge separation to cause lightning.\n\nWhen sufficient negatives and positives gather in this way, and when the electric field becomes sufficiently strong, an electrical discharge occurs within the clouds or between the clouds and the ground, producing the bolt. It has been suggested by experimental evidence that these discharges are triggered by cosmic ray strikes which ionise atoms, releasing electrons that are accelerated by the electric fields, ionising other air molecules and making the air conductive by a runaway breakdown, then starting a lightning strike. During the strike, successive portions of air become conductive as the electrons and positive ions of air molecules are pulled away from each other and forced to flow in opposite directions (stepped channels called step leaders). The conductive filament grows in length. At the same time, electrical energy stored in the electric field flows radially inward into the conductive filament.\n\nWhen a charged step leader is near the ground, opposite charges appear on the ground and enhance the electric field. The electric field is higher on trees and tall buildings. If the electric field is strong enough, a discharge can initiate from the ground. This discharge starts as positive streamer and, if it develops as a positive leader, can eventually connect to the descending discharge from the cloud.\n\nLightning can also occur within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions[1],[2], or can be caused by violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.\n\nA bolt of lightning usually begins when an invisible negatively charged stepped leader stroke is sent out from the cloud. As it does so, a positively charged streamer is usually sent out from the positively charged ground or cloud. When the two leaders meet, the electric current greatly increases. The region of high current propagates back up the positive stepped leader into the cloud. This "return stroke" is the most luminous part of the strike, and is the part that is really visible. Most lightning strikes usually last about a quarter of a second. Sometimes several strokes will travel up and down the same leader strike, causing a flickering effect. This discharge rapidly superheats the leader channel, causing the air to expand rapidly and produce a shock wave heard as thunder.\n\nIt is possible for streamers to be sent out from several different objects simultaneously, with only one connecting with the leader and forming the discharge path. Photographs have been taken on which non-connected streamers are visible such as that shown on the right.\n\nThis type of lightning is known as negative lightning because of the discharge of negative charge from the cloud, and accounts for over 95% of all lightning.\n\nAn average bolt of negative lightning carries a current of 30 kiloamperes, transfe
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Yes and no. Plasma, in physics, is simply ionized gas. "Ionized" means that at least one electron has been dissociated from a proportion of the atoms,particle or molecules. The free electric charges make the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields.\nLightning would be and is plasma because lightning is basically charged particles flowing through the air. As it travels, it charges the air, and turns it into plasma.\nFire is just a form of energy that is not known to conduct electricity. Fire is not a form of plasma.
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The initial noise comes from the superheated air surrounding a bolt of lightning moving at high speeds, creating a fairly high pitched CRACK.  The "rolling" thunder sound is caused by that superheated air "pushing" (via air pressure in case you were wondering) the air around it.  Kinda cool to think that all we are hearing is friction of air molecules at different speeds, huh?
1125383
Here is a link that will give you information on Ball Lightning:\n\nhttp://www.amasci.com/tesla/ballgtn.html\n\nAlso, go to Google...look under Images only...type in Ball Lightning...and you will see lots of pictures regarding Ball Lightning.  \n\nI hope this helps.
260652
Glass is non-conductive and was used as an insulator in homes and electric poles.  Since glass is non-conductive, lightning is not attracted to it and will not strike it.\n\nIf lightning could somehow be induced to strike glass, the most likely result would be that the bolt would melt a hole through the glass and continue to something more conductive on the other side.  There is very little chance that the glass would catch fire as silica (the basic material of glass) is not considered to be a flammable material.