Does the lightnings falls from the skies or go up from earth?
409956
Actually, there are 3 kinds of lightning strikes:  Cloud to cloud, Ground to Cloud and Cloud to ground.  So the answer to your question is yes.
199333
It's part of the design. Don't worry about hitting by lightning where there are storms. Because lightning hit the highest peak of the terrain.\nI'll give you an example to clarify it. If you're walking in the rice field with your umbrella, you are likely to be hit because you are the highest peak compare to your surrounding. But if you're walking in a forest, you are not likely to be hit because there are trees much higher/taller than you.
514416
The correct answer is yes it can.\n\nIn a thunder or cumulonimbus cloud the warm air rises and the cold air sinks, this movement of air causes a huge difference in the electrical distribution with the top of the cloud having a positive charge and the bottom having a negative charge.  A positive charge also builds up on the earths surface.\n\nEventually these charges built to such an extent that there is an electrical discharge from the negative charge at the base of the cloud towards the positive charge at the top of the cloud and also down to the positive charge on the ground.\n\nWhat actually happens is that the first discharge travels towards earth in short but very rapid bursts of about 100 meter lengths - when you see jagged strokes of lightening this is because each burst can change direction.  As it gets closer to earth the strength of the electrical field intensifies until contact is made with the earth.\n\nThis initial discharge is only a weak stroke of lightening and is called the Leader Stroke.  As soon as contact is made there is a much more powerful stroke of lightening which travels from the earth back to the cloud and this is the lightening we see, this is called the Return Stroke.
174590
Sheet lightning goes from cloud to cloud.  Lightning is caused when electrical charge accumulates within clouds.  When fork lightning happens, the charge accumulated in a cloud is discharged to the ground.  When sheet lightning occurs, two different cloud masses accumulate opposite changers until they discharge.\n\nThe voltage required to discharged is directly related to the distance between objects and the dielectric constant of the medium (i.e. air).
285182
Lightning basically is a discharge of static electricity. Atmosphere and ground work like two plates of a condensator.\n\nCharging a battery requires a steady current within a limited voltage range - if the voltage range is exceeded, all kinds of unwanted reactions take place which are likely to destroy the battery.\n\nI think what you are after is not use of the lightnings, but something like a cable hanging from the sky through which the electrostatic charge can be neutralized.\n\nThere are a couple of practical difficulties creating and fixating such a cable (or a sufficiently high tower). If we had them, we could indeed leach away potential differences between various layers of the atmosphere and the ground. Several science fiction writers have exploited that idea assuming availability of high temperature superconductors and spacelift cables. It might just work.\n\nSuperconductors are almost a necessity because a conventional cable that long would use up most of the energy as thermal energy released from its electrical resistance.\n\n\nSo: The use of lightnings as energy source is highly unlikely. The use of the energy which causes lightnings is theoretically possible, practically we lack the technology to make it useful. It is unlikely that we would rely on that energy if we could make space-lift cables because in that case we'd simply use solar energy collectors in space and lead down all the energy we need from the vast amount of unused solar radiation.
665153
The exact reason is not proven, but suspected that it is because precipitation falls to the ground carrying electrons, and the lightning occurs when the difference in charges between the clouds and the ground even out, and the electrons jump back to the clouds.  That is why lightning is said to go from ground to the clouds.
266861
Hurricanes typically don't produce much lightning, but sometimes they can.\n\nHere is a website with some investigation about this.\n\n http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd16jun99_1.htm
219960
Inside a thunderhead, electrical charges become separated. Warm updrafts sweep positive charges aloft, leaving the bottom of the cloud negatively charged. The attraction between the ground and the negative charges in the bottom of the cloud creates the lightning stroke, a brief current of negative charge that travels from cloud to ground. \n\nThe awesome power of the lightning stroke originates in the thunderstorm cloud where charges somehow become separated. There are several complicated theories that try to explain the actual mechanism of this charge separation, but no one really knows what pulls the charges apart in a thunderstorm cloud. It is believed that somehow water drops in the cloud become negatively charged and, being heavier than the surrounding air, fall to the bottom of the cloud. Meanwhile, the positive ions left behind are swept upward to the top of the cloud by the warm updrafts within the thunderhead. As more and more charges separate, parts of the cloud become so highly charged that the electrical forces tear nearby air molecules apart, making more charged fragments.\n\nSince the ground beneath the cloud has far fewer negative charges on it than the bottom of the cloud, there is an attraction between the ground and the bottom of the cloud. Therefore, any electrons liberated near the cloud are pulled down toward the ground. As these electrons move, they bash into air molecules that are in their way, breaking the molecules up and creating more charged fragments. All the new negative fragments are dragged downward along with the original electrons and we have the makings of an electrical avalanche.\n\nThe avalanche would continue unabated were it not for the heavier and more sluggish positive charges that are left behind. They tend to attract the accelerating army of electrons back toward the cloud. But more electrons are continually being liberated up in the cloud, and they stream to the rescue of the slowing electrons below, reinforcing their race downward. This process of electrons slowing and then being rescued by reinforcements repeats itself over and over again. The initial party of electrons makes its way in jerky 150-foot steps along a sinuous path toward the ground. \n\nThis initial exploratory mission forms what is called a "stepped leader," named for its start-stop motion. The stepped leader takes about 5/1000 of a second, moving at about 240 miles per second, to reach from cloud to ground. When the leader gets near the ground, it may draw a stream of positive charges (called a streamer) up from the ground to meet it. When either the stepped leader reaches the ground or a streamer runs up to join the stepped leader, an electrical connection is completed between the cloud and the ground. The ionized air molecules of the leader conduct electricity quite well, and the path of charged particles acts as a wire, connecting the highly negative cloud and the positive ground. This ionized air becomes the path of the main bolt of lightning.\n\nThe first charges to feel the connection are those near the ground. The light and mobile negative charges quickly accelerate along the wire of ionized air. In their mad rush to the ground the negative charges collide with the air, causing it to glow like a neon sign--only thousands of times brighter and with a bluish-white color. The air near the ground is the first to start glowing, but as the electrons further and further up feel the connection and begin to accelerate, the air further and further up also starts to glow. Even though the negative charges all move from cloud to ground, the bright flash of lightning moves from ground to cloud in a speedy 1/10,000 of a second, moving 61,000 miles per second! The super-heated air expands outward explosively, producing the shock wave we hear as thunder. The bright flash of glowing air is called the return stroke since it moves from ground to cloud, opposite to the moving charges.\n\nThe return stroke discharges a re
742265
Lightning causes relatively few deaths.\nSnowstorms cause far more.
422900
My guess is that they can get bigger during a storm. I think the reason is this:\nWhen a storm is brewing, the warm and cold air cause the clouds to vibrate and the moisture in the rain-clouds begins to 'rub together' so crazily that it creates it's own electricity (just like when you rub a balloon on your head briskly, and then it will stick to the wall for a while, due to the static electricity created)and then comes the lightning - when the static gets too much...it needs to release itself and the only place is EARTH. This sudden release of a high-voltage charge will no doubt cause the cloud to dissipate - thus making a huge downpour of rain...and with larger RAINDROPS!
217536
Lightning originates around 15,000 to 25,000 feet above sea level when raindrops are carried upward until some of them convert to ice. For reasons that are not widely agreed upon, a cloud-to-ground lightning flash originates in this mixed water and ice region. The charge then moves downward in 50-yard sections called step leaders. It keeps moving toward the ground in these steps and produces a channel along which charge is deposited. Eventually, it encounters something on the ground that is a good connection. The circuit is complete at that time, and the charge is lowered from cloud to ground. \nThe return stroke is a flow of charge (current) which produces a luminosity much brighter than the part that came down. This entire event usually takes less than half a second.
26238
buildings do not reach into ionosphere. Surface of eath has zero charge (hence grounding). Lightning goes  from a cloud to the ground, or into another cloud. \n\nAll tall buildings have lighning protection, i.e. a thick metal wire going from top-most point and into the ground.
554275
Lightning is nothing but charge travelling from a place of high potential to one of lower potential. So its a bunch of  ions (it could be positive/negative ions ) in there, colliding against the air molecules as they try and make their way from one place to the other. The collisions are what give rise to the light. \n\nBe that as it may, the travel of ions is a very random process. They will normally try and take the shortest route through, and if it werent for density fluctuations in the air, you would see a straight line. \n\nThe zigzagging comes about when the ion group is pushed about randomly by the air, as it tries to find the easiest way through, which doesn't work out to be the shortest one. Hence, the bolt itself takes the most natural form that it can, in the face of unforeseen hurdles - a zigzag shape!
561928
Lightning travels from the ground up to the clouds, not the other way around.
434074
clouds some times get charged to positive or negetive. the opposite charge is develped on the earth over which the cloud stands. if the cloud is close enough and the charge is good enough especially when water content in the air is high there will be an electric discharge fron the cloud to the earth. this is lightning and the noise of the discharge is thunder
420016
No. All such high towers are normally equipped with a an anti-lightening device, that grounds (or earths) any negative ions in the air around it, before it causes lightening. In a way, you can say it diffuses lightening, the same way a leaked live wire is earthed by the third pin on the socket before causing shock.
263570
Instances of "ball lightning", or at least phenomena that might well be construed as ball lightning, have been observed for hundreds of years. It is indeed likely that many historical (or contemporary) accounts relating to magic or UFOs may well be related to this natural phenomenon. Despite these many years of precedent, however, it is only over the past few decades that scientists have begun to take ball lightning seriously.\n\nClick here for a short educational film.\n \nInformation about ball lightning (as no theory has been confirmed as the 'definitive answer') comes mostly from eye-witness reports. Unfortunately, these sightings vary wildly in content, perhaps indicating that there are different kinds of ball lightning stalking the people of Earth.\n \nIn May of 1949, several farm labourers were gathering the asparagus harvest in Rushford, England. Peggy and Delia Filby were among those who took refuge from a rainstorm by sheltering themselves within a tarpaulin covered trailer. During the height of the thunderstorm, a brilliant flash rocked the area indicating a heavy lightning strike. Delia and others then saw what they described as a "football-sized, softly glowing orange-red ball of light". It gave off neither sparks nor rays, and did not pulse as it bounced across the field, towards the frightened observers. Within a few seconds, however, the ball disappeared soundlessly. The workers experienced something like an electric shock as it did so.\n \nIn 1967, M. Dmitriev, a Russian chemist, was camping on the banks of the Onegaw river. Following an intense lightning flash, a "ball of fire" appeared about 30 cm over the surface of the water, unaffected by the intense winds. The ball crackled and hissed as it flew past his head and into a group of nearby trees. The sphere bounced from tree to tree "like a billiard ball", emitting a trail of blue-grey smoke.\n \nOne of the most (in)famous ball lightning sightings comes from Roger Jennison, professor of Electronics at the University of Kent. In March of 1963, while caught in a storm en route from New York to Washington, his plane was enveloped by a bright and audible electrical discharge. Some seconds later, a glowing sphere emerged from the pilot's cabin and passed through the central aisle of the aeroplane, from one end to the other. The ball floated at about 75 cm above the floor, and moved at approximately 1.5 metres per second (relative to the aircraft). It gave off no discernible heat, and was an opaque, blue-white colour.\n \nFrom these accounts and others, scientists have come to understand that ball lightning typically occurs shortly after 'normal lightning', although it has been known to arise several days after such a lightning strike. It appears able to pass through glass and solid objects, sometimes causing damage in the process, and only rarely emits heat. Sometimes a hissing or crackling sound can be heard, other times it is perfectly silent.\n \n \nBall Lightning origin theories from AA&ES Magazine.\n \n"A simple answer to the phenomenon doesn't appear to be forthcoming and tentative explanations rely heavily on theoretical physics. One of the current favourites concerns electromagnetic plasmoid models: the greatest problem for the theorist is explaining how sufficient energy be contained within such a small space without it being emitted steadily and continuously, but sometimes suddenly. Dr. Geoff Endean (School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Durham) has suggested that the energy containment problem can be circumvented since a very rapidly rotating electric field can exist in a plasma without a magnetic field with no apparent limit to the electrical field strength - heady stuff indeed.\n \nFurthermore, it has also been suggested that ball lightning may occur quite frequently but the electromagnetism associated with it is not strong enough to render it visible to the eye