"Pope Benedict has shocked a billion Roman Catholics around the world, and his closest advisers, by announcing that he will resign at the end of this month.
Within hours of Pope Benedict announcing his resignation, lightning struck St Peter's Basilica."
"The mysterious “Relámpago del Catatumbo” (Catatumbo lightning) is a unique natural phenomenon in the world. Located on the mouth of the Catatumbo river at Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), the phenomenon is a cloud-to-cloud lightning that forms a voltage arc more than five kilometre high during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours a night, and as many as 280 times an hour."
via mytechnologyworld9.blogspot.com
"Sometimes in science, it’s easy to get caught up in the practical, to focus so heavily on the why’s and how’s of things, that it’s easy to miss the simple beauty that nature offers.
That might be the case with a little known type of lightening that occurs between the part of the atmosphere where weather events are seen quite easily, and the far reaches near the beginning of space. Called sprites, these other kinds of lightening strikes are of far shorter duration than we’re accustomed to; it wasn’t until just the past thirty years or so that anyone even knew they existed. So odd were they, that pilots flying at high altitudes who saw them feared for their jobs if they spoke of them. Now however a research team has captured some instances of them using high speed cameras."
Photograph by Ricardo Mohr
A cloud of lightning-topped ash rises toward a starry sky during the June eruption of southern Chile's Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano complex in a picture submitted to My Shot in October. The summer eruption grounded flights in Chile and neighboring Argentina.
This month officials began evacuating people from the immediate vicinity of the Hudson Volcano, 470 miles (756 kilometers) south of Puyehue-Cordón Caulle, according to the Associated Press. Recent releases of steam and ash from the volcano have had authorities in Chile and Argentina on high alert, AP reports.
"The largest lightning generator in the world is being built and you can take part. Join a record-breaking demonstration of a lightning discharge and live to tell about it.
The Lightning Foundry is a project to re-create super-long discharge effects normally found only in lightning. Two 10-story Tesla Coil towers will fill an area the size of a football field with lightning-like discharges hundreds of feet in length. If we trigger super-long discharge effects the arcs could strike considerably further."
"Decotora" Trucks Shine in the Night
"What happens if a Japanese truck "dies and goes to heaven?" It becomes one of the glorified "Decotora" trucks! Decorated trucks, vans and semis glow in the night with the million lights, adding to the already incredibly bright Japanese urban landscape."
by Robert Arn
"The Pawnee National Grasslands in Colorado is an exceptional place both to observe nature and to stargaze. Observers have a nearly unobstructed view of the horizon. During the summer months, lightning can be seen miles away, and the night sky is generally free of annoying light pollution.
While waiting for skies to darken at a star party near Keota, Colorado last month, I directed my scope and camera toward a summer thunderstorm plowing across the plains. Its accompanying lightning; especially the cloud-to-ground lightning was quite dramatic. As shown above in a time lapse photo, a dozen or more strokes were recorded in less than half a minute. Each bolt typically generates 100,000,000 volts of electricity, and the more energetic strikes can reach temperatures of 54,000 degrees F (30,000 C). Before too long, the storm moved off, and I was able to turn my attention to the clearing and darkening sky."
