15 June: Lightning

It is on this date in 1752 that Benjamin Franklin may have carried out his lightning kite experiment. It's also National Electricity Day - so here are some facts about lightning.

1. There are around 3,000,000 flashes every day, or about 44 strikes every second. The place on Earth which gets the most lightning is Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where large thunderstorms occur on as many as 160 nights a year, with an average of 28 lightning strikes per minute lasting up to 10 hours at a time. That means as many as 40,000 lightning strikes in a single night. This unusual weather is caused by warm winds from the Caribbean Sea meeting cool ones from the Andes.
2. Lightning is caused by an imbalance of electrical charges between clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves. Drops of Water or particles of ice or Snow in a storm cloud collide, producing a negative charge in the cloud while objects on the ground become positively charged. Lightning is basically nature trying to remedy the imbalance. That said, a positive chagre at the top of a storm cloud can cause lightning as well, about 5% of the time. So called "positive lightning" is stronger and more dangerous. It can even travel up to 10 miles from the cloud it originated in and strike, literally, out of the Blue.
3. A lightning bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity. It's also extremely hot - it can heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the Sun’s surface. It's this heat which causes thunder, as the air around the lightning flash expands. When lightning strikes rock or sand, it can fuse the minerals within into a tube called a fulgurite or "lightning fossil". It's also the reason that a tree struck by lightning can blow apart - the water inside the tree vapourises and expands.
4. While it can be extremely bad for trees, lightning is actually vital for plants in general. They rely on a process called nitrogen fixation in order to absorb nitrogen from the air. Bacteria and algae help with this, but the extreme heat of a lightning strike creates nitrogen oxides which fall as nitorgen rich rain. Some scientists believe there would be no life on Earth at all if not for lightning.
5. About 2,000 people are killed by lightning every year. The chances of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is around one in 5,000. Nine out of ten victims of a lightning strike survive, although they may suffer life changing injuries including a unique skin rash called red Lichtenberg figures, branching, tree-like patterns caused by high voltage electrical discharges passing along the skin. A person struck by lightning doesn't retain the charge, so should you come across someone who's been struck, it's safe to help them.
6. An irrational fear of lightning is known as astraphobia (sometimes also called brontophobia, keraunophobia, or tonitrophobia) and is the third most common phobia in America behind fear of heights and fear of animals.
7. Lightning travels at 270,000 mph, not at the speed of light (although the flash it generates does). Lightning would therefore take 55 minutes to reach the Moon, or could get from London to Bristol in 1.5 seconds.
8. When you see a bolt of lightning, it may seem that it travels down from the cloud to the Earth, but in fact, it's doing the opposite - the positive charge from whatever it is striking travels up to meet the negative charge from the cloud. While the flash may make it look like a thick bolt, the actual width of a lightning bolt is only about 2-3 cm.
9. Because lightning is so frequent, humans have learned to protect their tall buildings and structures from it using lightning conductors. The average house may not have a specific lightning conductor but will be grounded by metal in the structure, gutters and plumbing. Therefore, the safest place to be during a thunderstorm is indoors. That said, a garden shed, bus shelter or other building without plumbing or wiring wouldn't be. A car is safe but not because of the rubber tyres. Rubber tyres, or, indeed, Shoes, offer little or no protection. It is the metal sides of a car that conduct the lightning safely to the ground. It would be inadvisable to touch the metal sides of a car during a storm. In France, up until the late 18th century, people believed that church bells repelled lightning. Bells would often have the words "fulgura frango" inscribed on them, meaning "I chase lightning". If there was a thunderstorm, bell ringers would rush to the church to ring the bells and chase the lightning away. However, a high tower with large metal objects was actually the worst place to be. Between 1753 and 1786 in France, 103 bell-ringers were struck by lightning and killed, so the custom was eventually banned.
10. So how can you reduce your chances of getting hit by lightning? If you see lightning, count the number of seconds which go by before the thunder. Divide this number by five and this is how many miles away the storm is. If you prefer to work with kilometres, divide by three. If that time is 30 seconds or less, the thunderstorm is within six miles (ten kilometers) of you, and you need to get indoors and not come out until at least 30 minutes after the last clap of thunder. If you can't get indoors, avoid being the tallest thing around, or sheltering under the tallest thing around. Indoors, as we know, the plumbing and electrical systems will conduct the lightning, which means it would be a bad idea to take a shower, do laundry or even wash your hands in the middle of a storm. Most of the people who suffer lightning related injuries in the home do so while talking on a landline phone, as the reception systems and wiring conducts lightning.

The Raiders Trilogy

Book One

Book Three

Book Two

   

Power Blaster is a superhero who lives in a dimension not unlike our own, in the mega-nation of Innovia. No-one knows who he is or where his powers come from. 
After saving the life of the President several times, Power Blaster learns that a test of a nuclear warhead to defend the planet against asteroid strikes will have devastating consequences for his world and sets out to prevent it.

Power Blaster's actions lead to an unexpected result - a wormhole opens between his dimension and our own. Anyone in the vicinity is pulled through. People from diverse backgrounds and cultures must co-operate to survive and learn to live with the powers travel through the wormhole has bestowed on some of them.

A stable wormhole is established between the two dimensions. Power Blaster is determined to bring Desi Troyes, the person responsible for the bomb, to justice. Help comes from some rather unexpected sources. Meanwhile, Shanna Douglas sets out on a mission of her own, to find out if there is a cure for the life altering condition the wormhole gave her friend, Benedict Cole. Little does she know that she will stumble upon the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious origins.