Scientific American August 1997 [antikvár]

from the editors Current Events Roy C. Sullivan of Virginia was not a lucky man, but the sorry circumstances of his life make for one of the most mythic entries in the Guinness Book of Records. He holds the distinction of having been struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977. The first bolt cost him a big toenail; the second, his eyebrows. In subsequent strikes, he suffered burns and other injuries to his shouldei; legs, ankle, chest and stomach, and his hair was set afire (twice). He died in 1983, supposedly of a broken heart, Cupid finishing what Zeus could not. Luckily, only a relative few have ever attracted lightning, but almost everyone has been attracted to it. While reading this month's pair of ani-cles on lightning, beginning on page 30,1 realized how soon and often lightning cut a jagged path through my own interests in science. For example, some of my earliest memories are of sitting on our family's front porch with my father and grandfather during thunderstorms, inhaling the odd tonic of ozone in the air. From them I learned to track the distance of storms by counting the seconds between lightning flashes and thunder—probably my introduction to the difference between the speeds of light and sound. A sixth-grade expedition to the Museum of Science in Boston brought me face to face with what was, I think, at least for a time, the world's largest Van de Graaff generator. The museum used it to explain the physics of electricity and to puncture hopeful notions that rubber sneakers or automobile tires might offer enough insulation to protect against the 100 million volts of a lightning strike. (To do that, as I recall, the rubber would need to be about a mile thick.) These days I can measure to the block how close I get to most lightning: my office looks out at the Empire State Building, which is struck on average 23 times annually. NEVER TWICE? Make that 23 times a year. Lightning undoubtedly has plenty more to teach us. Many people I swear to have seen ball lightning, weird globes of moving energy. Despite reports of ball lightning dating back to the ancient Greeks, science has not yet been able to document its existence convincingly. But maybe ball lightning's believers can draw encouragement from the example of astronomer Louis A. Frank of the University of Iowa. Ten years ago most experts dismissed his evidence that miniature cometlike bodies were constantly pehing the earth's atmosphere. As our story on page 10 reports, new data are starting to win him converts. Perhaps lightning will strike twice—pace, Mr. Sullivan. JOHN RENNIE, Editor in Chief editors@>;ciam.com