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SCIENCE
The Pentagon Launches Plan to Master Lightning
(Dec. 17) -- In Greek mythology, it was a weapon
of war. Now the U.S. military is looking to tame lightning, which remains one of
nature's most confounding -- and feared -- phenomena.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the R&D arm of the Pentagon,
has embarked on a project called NIMBUS, which seeks to understand the
underlying mechanisms of lightning. "Although significant progress has been
made in recent years in our understanding of the lightning discharge and related
phenomena, fundamental questions remain unanswered," the
agency said in an announcement released today.
Lightning has long perplexed scientists. Not only are atmospheric scientists
unsure of exactly what initiates lightning, but they also don't understand
precisely how and why it is able to propagate over great distances, and where it
will strike. That makes it, in DARPA's view, "one of the major unsolved
mysteries in the atmospheric sciences."
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