Why does lightning zigzag? At last, an answer to the mystery

Everyone has seen lightning and marveled at its power. But despite its frequency—about 8.6 million lightning strikes occur worldwide every day—why lightning proceeds in a series of steps from the thundercloud to the earth ...

Physicists strike gold, solving 50-year lightning mystery

The chances of being struck by lightning are less than one in a million, but those odds shortened considerably this month when more than 4.2 million lightning strikes were recorded in every Australian state and territory ...

Australians rescued from roofs after flash floods

Rescuers plucked more than 100 people from their roofs Monday after a flash flood swamped a small Australian town and sent residents scurrying for safety, officials said.

Fixed-duration strikes can revitalize labor

"Fixed-duration" strikes—such as the three-day walkout by 15,000 nurses in mid-September—protect worker interests and impose financial and reputational costs on employers, suggesting that confrontational tactics can help ...

Advances in predicting the locations of Great Basin wildfires

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of Montana have developed a way to forecast which of the Great Basin's more than 60 million acres have the highest ...

Lightning strikes shape tropical forests

It's easy to see how droughts, fires and other features of the environment alter and determine the shape of a forest, from the trees that compose it, to where and which trees grow and live together.

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