3,153,600,000… That’s a pretty big number. That’s the average amount of lightning bolts that strike the earth every year! Remember that this doesn’t include the flashes in the sky; this is only the strikes that occur. I find that fascinating! That becomes over 8 million strikes a day!

            What is lightning? A.) Zeus throwing them from cloud tops, B.) Thor smashing his hammer into a giant anvil, C.) Serpents, or D.) Thunder Bird.

            If you chose any of these than you are wrong like our ancestors. However, there are still many questions as to why lightning occurs. We know that it is electricity, and that it happens most often when ice and water move around in the atmosphere causing a build up of electric charges. The opposite charges of things grounded to the Earth, if not the Earth itself, causing streams of electric sparks to shoot together causing a large FLASH and BOOM. Despite all the information we have on how lightning occurs, we still are left knowing less than half of the information. For there are 3 other types of lightning we are just beginning to understand, and how it forms on other planets without water vapor to begin with is an even bigger mystery.
            As far as the characteristics go for lightning, we happen to know a lot. For instance, we know the speed at which lightning travels, and that it is far more attracted to metals than other elements. Lightning reaches speeds of up to 60,000 miles per hour! It has been known to strike at distances of over 10 miles!
            In Colorado there was a man riding his bike past a little league game. There was a storm 15 miles away. As he past the baseball game on his way home, he was struck by a bolt of lighting seemingly out of thin air! He had been hit from 15 miles away. This is the longest strike on record.
            Most bolts of lighting are about as wide as your fingers, but can be just as round as a large tree! These massive bolts of lightning out shine even the brightest of lights. Imagine one hundred, 100 watt light bulbs… Pretty bright huh? Well now imagine one hundred thousand, 100 watt light bulbs!!! Now that’s bright. But that STILL isn’t enough. Lets take that 100,000 and multiply it by 100! Yep that’s right, the average flash of a lightning strike is the equivalent of 10 MILLION, 100 watt lightbulbs. This bright light carries quite the punch, also.
            To explain this, you must understand that it’s not the “volts” that kills a person, but the amps. The amps is the measurement of electricity passing through in a given second. Volts are just part of the measurements, but it’s the amps pushing the volts that matter even more. For instance: a toaster has about 100-200 volts and 5-10 amps. This won’t kill a person. It would be equivalent to being shocked by an electric fence with 500-2,000 volts and 1 amp. This is far from deadly to the average person. The average starter motor in a car is about 120 amps.
            To answer the question in a nutshell, typically anything over 15,000 volts can be threatening and anything over 65 amps. This is nothing compared to the average bolt of lightning, running on 100 million volts and 10,000 amps!!! This is billions of watts of electricity in a split second. The average lightning strike holds more power than all the electrical generating plants in the USA in that split second, but since this only lasts for about .00001 of a second, the bolt of lightning would only power a lightbulb for a month.

            A strike is so fast we don’t even realize that there is actually more than one strike taking place! This information has only been recently coming about with use of better photography. The average lightning strike is actually 10-20 strikes in a split second. An individual stroke is far too fast for us to see, but all the strikes together last just long enough for it to look like a flicker.
            The electricity travels so fast that the energy shoots right through the object it strikes, and it’s converted to heat energy. Although it’s not known how humans and other animals can survive such a shocking experience, this does help us understand a little more as to how so many have walked away from being struck. Even though the bolt is carrying millions of volts with thousands of amps, the person is more or less being burned, as opposed to shocked.
            Temperatures in the path of a lightning bolt have been measured as high as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit! To put that into perspective, that’s 10 times the boiling point of Iron, and 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun! This high level of heat expand and contract the air particles around the bolt in an instant, and causes the intense sound waves known as thunder. Since sound travels slower than light you can use this to help measure the distance you are from a lightning strike. When you see the strike start counting, and for every 5 seconds you count that’s about 1 mile. So if you count to 10 that means you are 2 miles from the strike.

             Lets tackle some myths about lightning by answering a few common questions:

#1.) What are the types of lightning?

            Well there are a few we are just starting to understand, but the three main kinds are intracloud, cloud-to-ground, and intercloud. Intra cloud is when lightning occurs in a cloud and stays in that same cloud (from our view it looks as though a cloud has just flashed). Cloud-to-ground is what we refer to as a lightning strike (this is the most dangerous). Intercloud is when lightning travels across gaps between clouds (these are the “veins” we see crawling across the sky).
            There are a few others you may have heard of, but they are not actually different from the 3 I mentioned, they are simply “looks” that have been given nick names and over time people have confused them to being different kinds of lightning. The 2 most common being heat lightning and colored lightning. Heat lightning is simply distant intracloud lightning that occurs when it’s hot out, leading people to believe it’s different, sometimes appearing red or orange because of the location on the horizon, just like when the moon looks orange and red. It doesn’t actually change color and style, it just seems that way. Colored lighting looks different colors, but that’s all relative the lighting conditions, again just like the moon.

#2.) Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
            HAAA! Why not? Of course it does. The Empire State building was struck 3 times in one storm this month! Yes, “this month” April 13th, 2011, and has averaged 25 strikes a year since it was built.

#3.) If it’s not raining, or not cloudy than I’m safe from being struck.
            Did you not just read the story of the man struck from 15 miles on a clear day?

#4.) My tires save me from being struck or shocked, because they are rubber and separate me from the ground.
            HAHAHAHA, don’t make Zeus laugh. An inch of rubber does you no good, 4 or 5 inches wouldn’t keep you from being struck. But, the car is still safe because the lightning will travel through the metal of the car and exit through the rims STRAIGHT THROUGH THE TIRES and into the ground. This is why when cars are struck by lightning (which has happened on several occasions, some you can see on youtube I’m sure) the tires blow out.

#5.) After being struck by lighting, the victim stays electrified for some time.
            Sure they do…. By all means don’t give a person that was just struck by lightning CPR and first aid…. We’ll see how long they live. TOUCH THEM! I already told you that the electricity passes through to the ground, and most of the energy is converted to heat anyway. You wont even receive a light static shock for touching a victim.

            Florida is the lightning capital of the world. It receives 3 times the lightning than any other place in the world, and 10% of all lightning strike victims are in Florida.

            Lastly: “what are the odds of being struck, or killed by lighting?”

            Well there are a lot of statistics out there. The key is to remember a few things. The odds are always going to differ, if you are outside compared to inside. So even though the chances of an average person being struck this year are 1 in 750,000 if you are outside you increase that chance to 1 in 1,000. That’s quite a difference. Secondly, not everyone struck is killed, as I mentioned before. The odds of being killed when struck are 1 in 6. Also your odds for being struck are greater when there is more lighting. For instance if you live in the following states your odds are 25% greater than the others: Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. This means here in Iowa we have a 1 in 500,000 chance of being struck, because we have more lighting strikes per storm; raising our odds to 1 in 750 if we are outside. If you live to 80 years old your chances are 1 in 6,250.
            Statistically men make up 83% of the victims. Through studies they have shown that there is no real biological difference that make people more prone, only brains. Meaning those with strong egos and no fear of the lightning, will be met with a bang.

            Some people have been struck on several occasions.  There was a woman who was struck 4 times, twice inside her house (once washing her hands, and a second while on the phone with her daughter). The record was a Park Ranger that was struck 7 times throughout his life. He was in a vehicle two of the times, and open to the elements the other 5, once he was even fishing. Lessons to be had from people like this…. Stay inside, off the phone, away from windows, and avoid using water during storms…and for goodness sake, don’t go fishing!

    These days the Space Industry suffers from budget cuts. In some cases that's ok. In others, it seems very counter productive. In Honor of our Astronauts and next week being the mark of 2 mile stones in space age history: Sunday the 17th will be the 34th anniversary of the Surveyor III launch. This was the first spacecraft to sample the surface of the moon. 2nd is Monday will be the 40th anniversary of Salyut 1, the first space station (this is also the day that Einstein died in 1955....scientist see no correlation.).
   So, with that in mind, here are 7 interesting facts you probably didn't know about "the next frontier / the great beyond."

#1. The average astronaut grows over an inch while in space. This is due to the decreased pressure on the body's joints and bones.
#2. The heart shrinks, you sinuses swell, and your face gets puffy and red. This is all due to the "fluid shift" which is caused by not having gravity. Here on Earth, gravity is constantly pulling down on us, so our body works hard to counter by forcing fluids up to keep our bodies in balance. Therefor, without gravity pulling so hard on the fluids, they are all forced up, making the heart have to work less, the sinuses get full of gunk, and the extra blood in the head causes swelling, redness, and headaches.
#3. Studies have shown that no astronauts snore while sleeping in space. Even if they snore hear on Earth!
#4. If your space suit is breached, or your helmet breaks while in outer space several things happen, and some don't. For instance you wont die immediately, and you will not explode. However, the water on your eyes, in your nose, and mouth will boil. Also when the suit is breached astronauts are told do breath out, and NOT hold their breathe.... unless they want their lungs to rupture due to the sudden decompression. (all this was actually proven when in 1965 an astronauts space suit failed and he was exposed for 15 seconds.) It would take about 2minutes before you died in space, due to the low temperatures, and lack of oxygen.
#5. No astronaut has died in space...yet. All 18 deaths have occurred within the atmosphere during reentry and launch... So stay here, or there, and your chances are better..
#6. A survey was done on cosmonauts (soviet/russian astronaut) that spent long durations in space. They said the 2 things that where hardest to readjust to after getting back to Earth was lose of strength (due to muscle atrophy simply walking and raising your arms can be hard) and everything falls when you let go of it.
#7. After spending a lot of time and money developing a way for astronauts to pee while in space, and not have it fly all over the place, they ended up giving them diapers.

   So, having second thoughts about venturing to the moon? Or is it all worth the risk? Some say the second you are looking down at the earth, as you would the moon from home, it all becomes worth it.