It sounds like something out of a fantasy film—lightning hits the beach and leaves behind a sculpture made of glass. However, it’s actually based on real science. Here’s how and why lightning can ...

Talk about a bolt from the blue. Scientists July 31 announced the discovery of the world's longest lightning flash ever detected – a whopping 515-mile-long bolt that blasted across central U.S. skies ...

Lightning is a familiar sight in stormy skies, but a new report has revealed just how far some bolts can travel — in one case, more than 500 miles. That astonishing bolt sparked to life in eastern ...

Lightning flashes streak across the sky in the German countryside. One large flash is mostly horizontal, another one is vertical. Sometimes lightning bolts can stretch hundreds of miles horizontally.

Though scientists have long understood how lightning strikes, the precise atmospheric events that trigger it within thunderclouds have remained a perplexing mystery. The mystery may now be solved, ...

Scientists have long understood why lightning forms, but the atomic processes at the core of the phenomenon have remained largely a mystery—especially the strange mechanics behind terrestrial ...

An enormous, 515-mile-long flash of lightning that crossed at least three states has been named the longest in recorded history in the world. The 2017 “megaflash” stretched from eastern Texas to near ...