A astronomy cast episode 424, lightning. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts

based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know,

but how we know what we know. My name is Fraser Kane, I'm the publisher of University

of Canada and with me is Dr. Pamela Gay, the director of Cosmic Wester. Hey, how are you doing?

I'm doing well. How are you doing, Fraser? Good. Hilariously, last week we talked about

Cyclonic Storms and this week where I live on the west coast of Canada, we are about to be smashed

by a Cyclonic Storm, the leftover super typhoon that is crossing the Pacific. So if you don't

hear me next week, it's because we just got wiped off the west coast of Canada. We will send

paddle boats. Please do, yeah. We will definitely have a flood, have flooding from our river as we do

every year. We just have it all the time, but you're in your basement right now. Oh yeah, I've never

had flooding in my house. Okay. We've had flooding from the nearby river that sort of fills up the

local park and you can then take your kayak and go or canoe and enjoy an aquatic version of the

local soccer fields. It's pretty funny. So hopefully it's on that bad. We'll see, but I'll let you

know how it goes next week after we, so now I get to, I guess the point is I get to experience a

Cyclonic Storm firsthand. So does this mean that if things follow through this week you're going to

have massive lightning storms? Nope. We never get lightning here, but you're right. You don't.

And let's find out. So it turns out that nature figured out how to use electricity long before

the humans did. Lightning storms are common across the earth and even the solar system.

What causes electricity in the sky and how can science use it to understand the world around us?

All right, Pamela. Yeah, so you were just talking about this in the intro, which is that, you know,

we're about to get lightning here, but we're not. We never do. And in fact, this is one of the things

that my wife is so surprised is, is that she comes from Texas where lightning storms are just a

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