The chance of being struck by lightning is less than one in a million, but this month it was more than four million strikes in Australia.
It's a huge amount of electricity to think that each lighting strike travels at more than 320,000 kilometers per hour.
Do you ever wonder about lightning? Scientists around the world have debated why lightning zig-zags and how it is connected to the thunder cloud above.
The University of South Australia published a paper that solved the two mysteries.
The physics of lightning has stumped the best scientists for decades according to Dr. John Lowke.
There are a few textbooks on lightning, but they don't explain how the zig-zags form, why the column connecting the steps is dark, and how lightning can travel over kilometers.
The answer is not yet known. The singlet-delta metastable oxygen molecule is a singlet.
When there is enough energy in the electrons to hit the oxygen molecule, lightning happens. After colliding with the molecule, the electrons form a highly conducting step that redistributes the electric field.
The conducting column connecting the step to the cloud is dark when electrons attach to neutral oxygen molecule and then immediately detach from them.
This is important.
Dr. Lowke says that we need to understand how lightning is initiated so that we can better protect buildings.
The Empire State Building is an example of a building that is hit by lightning a lot.
For hundreds of years, the solution to protect structures has been the same.
A lightning rod is a wire that is attached to the top of a building and connects to the ground. It is designed to save the building from being damaged by lightening.
The uncertain factor is how many Franklin rods are needed on each building.
Shelter sheds made from galvanized iron and supported by wooden posts are among the structures that are not protected.
New Australian lightning protection standards recommend that these roofs be earthed. The change was recommended by Dr. Lowke.
Climate change is making lightning protection even more important. Due to the increased risk of damage from lightning, we need to look at additional protection.
The better informed we are about how lightning occurs, the better we can design our environment.
A paper titled "Toward a theory of stepped leaders in lightning" was published in the Journal of physics D: Applied physics. The authors are Dr. John Lowke and Dr. Endre Szili.
A theory of "stepped-leaders" of lightning was proposed by John J Lowke and his colleagues. 10.1088/1361-6463/aca 103 is a book.
Journal information: Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
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