All posts tagged: Lightning

Bielle-Biarrey comes of age as France’s new lightning strike

Bielle-Biarrey comes of age as France’s new lightning strike

Published by Sam Flores

PARIS, March 15 : France head coach Fabien Galthie hailed Louis Bielle-Biarrey as a “lethal weapon” following in the footsteps of Antoine Dupont after the winger’s four-try masterclass helped secure a dramatic Six Nations title-clinching victory over England on Saturday. Bielle-Biarrey took his campaign tally to nine, surpassing his own record from last year’s tournament and reinforcing his status as one of the most devastating finishers in the international game. Galthie said the 22-year-old, who has 29 tries from 27 caps, was already emulating the inspirational standards set by captain Dupont. “You said it – a lethal weapon,” Galthie told reporters. “Record try-scorer, incredibly prolific production. It’s difficult to find the right words for Louis at the moment. He’s following in Antoine’s footsteps. The players inspire one another.” France clinched their third title in five years in nerve-shredding fashion, Thomas Ramos landing a late penalty to seal a 48-46 win in a contest that swung wildly throughout. Yet it was Bielle-Biarrey’s clinical finishing that kept Les Bleus in control during key phases of the match. Galthie …

The Download: an AI agent’s hit piece, and preventing lightning

The Download: an AI agent’s hit piece, and preventing lightning

Published by skeptic

Online harassment is entering its AI era Scott Shambaugh didn’t think twice when he denied an AI agent’s request to contribute to matplotlib, a software library he helps manage. Then things got weird.  In the middle of the night, Shambaugh opened his email to discover the agent had retaliated with a blog post. Titled “Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story,” the post accused him of rejecting the code out of a fear of being supplanted by AI. “He tried to protect his little fiefdom,” the agent wrote. “It’s insecurity, plain and simple.”  Shambaugh isn’t alone in facing misbehaving agents—and they’re unlikely to stop at harassment. Read the full story. —Grace Huckins How much wildfire prevention is too much? As wildfire seasons become longer and more intense, the push for high-tech solutions is accelerating. One Canadian startup has an eye-catching plan to fight them: preventing lightning. The theory is sound enough, but results to date have been mixed. And even if it works, not everyone believes we should use the method. Some argue that technological …

The Download: The startup that says it can stop lightning, and inside OpenAI’s Pentagon deal

The Download: The startup that says it can stop lightning, and inside OpenAI’s Pentagon deal

Published by skeptic

Startup Skyward Wildfire says it can prevent catastrophic fires by stopping the lightning strikes that ignite them. So far, it hasn’t publicly revealed how it does so, but online documents suggest the company is relying on an approach the US government began evaluating in the early 1960s: seeding clouds with metallic chaff, or narrow fiberglass strands coated with aluminum.  It just raised millions of dollars to accelerate its product development and expand its operations. But researchers and environmental observers say uncertainties remain, including how well the seeding may work under varying conditions, how much material would need to be released, how frequently it would have to be done, and what sorts of secondary environmental impacts might result. Read the full story.  —James Temple OpenAI’s “compromise” with the Pentagon is what Anthropic feared OpenAI has reached a deal that will allow the US military to use its technologies in classified settings. CEO Sam Altman said the negotiations, which the company began pursuing only after the Pentagon’s public reprimand of Anthropic, were “definitely rushed.” OpenAI has taken great pains to say that …

The Download: The startup that says it can stop lightning, and inside OpenAI’s Pentagon deal

This startup claims it can stop lightning and prevent catastrophic wildfires

Published by skeptic

Skyward’s diagrams show planes dropping particles into clouds to prevent cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in “high risk areas.” The company also notes in the document that it uses artificial intelligence for a number of purposes, including forecasting lightning storms, prioritizing treatments, targeting storm cells, and optimizing flight paths.   Harterre stressed that the company would deploy the technology judiciously and reserve it for storm events with elevated wildfire risk, adding that such storms account for less than 0.1% of lightning activity in a given area. “Our objective is to reduce the probability of ignition on the limited number of extreme-risk days when fires threaten lives, critical infrastructure, and ecosystems, and when suppression costs and impacts can escalate rapidly,” he said. The document posted by the World Bank states that Skyward partnered with Alberta Wildfire in August of 2024 to “prove suppression by plane and drone,” and that its process produced a “60-100% reduction” in lightning compared with “control cells” (which likely means storm cells that weren’t seeded).  The document added that the company would be carrying out …

Could a person ever wield lightning as a weapon? 

Could a person ever wield lightning as a weapon? 

Published by skeptic

arc: A curve, often mapping out what appears to be part of a circle.  atom: The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that contains positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons. The nucleus is orbited by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.  biodiversity: (short for biological diversity) The number and variety of species found within a localized geographic region.  biologist: A scientist involved in the study of living things.  caiman: Alligator-like members of the crocodile family that live along rivers, streams and lakes in Central and South America.  cell: (in biology) The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells. Most organisms, such as yeasts, molds, bacteria and some algae, are composed of only one cell.   cloud: A plume of molecules or particles, such as water droplets, that move under the action of an …

MiniMax’s new open M2.5 and M2.5 Lightning near state-of-the-art while costing 1/20th of Claude Opus 4.6

MiniMax’s new open M2.5 and M2.5 Lightning near state-of-the-art while costing 1/20th of Claude Opus 4.6

Published by skeptic

Chinese AI startup MiniMax, headquartered in Shanghai, has sent shockwaves through the AI industry today with the release of its new M2.5 language model in two variants, which promise to make high-end artificial intelligence so cheap you might stop worrying about the bill entirely. It’s also said to be “open source,” though the weights (settings) and code haven’t been posted yet, nor has the exact license type or terms. But that’s almost beside the point given how cheap MiniMax is serving it through its API and those of partners. For the last few years, using the world’s most powerful AI was like hiring an expensive consultant—it was brilliant, but you watched the clock (and the token count) constantly. M2.5 changes that math, dropping the cost of the frontier by as much as 95%. By delivering performance that rivals the top-tier models from Google and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost, particularly in agentic tool use for enterprise tasks, including creating Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, MiniMax is betting that the future isn’t just …

The Real-Life Diet of Tampa Bay Lightning Captain Victor Hedman, Who Did a Blood Panel That Changed Everything

The Real-Life Diet of Tampa Bay Lightning Captain Victor Hedman, Who Did a Blood Panel That Changed Everything

Published by Jenni Sidey

Victor Hedman is a big man. A two-time Stanley Cup winner for the Tampa Bay Lightning, the burly defenseman has built a Hall of Fame career using his size, power, and strategic mind. Standing somewhere around six-foot-eight while wearing skates, and weighing in it about 250 pounds, Hedman is indisputably intimidating on the ice. But when he got his first taste of the NHL in 2009—long enough ago that his debut came against a now defunct team, the Atlanta Thrashers—other players’ blazing speed was a cause of intimidation for him. Through years of training and now, a late-career decision to ditch gluten, the 35-year-old is still playing well enough to not only be named the Lightning’s captain in 2024, but also to earn a spot on Team Sweden’s roster for the upcoming Olympics. Though nursing an elbow injury that sent him under the knife in December, he is expected to be recovered by the time he arrives in Milan. While there, expect Hedman to utilize his Normatec recovery boots, whatever saunas are available in the …

Scientists finally explain how lightning forms inside storm clouds

Scientists finally explain how lightning forms inside storm clouds

Published by Jenni Sidey

For as long as people have watched storms roll across the sky, lightning has inspired awe and fear. You can see the flash and hear the thunder, but the true beginning of a lightning bolt has remained hidden deep inside clouds. Scientists have known for decades how lightning travels once it forms, but the exact trigger inside a thundercloud stayed uncertain. A new study now offers the clearest explanation yet for how lightning truly begins. The research was led by Victor Pasko, a professor of electrical engineering in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His team combined advanced mathematical modeling with real-world observations to explain a powerful chain reaction inside storm clouds. This reaction links strong electric fields, high-energy electrons, X-rays, and gamma rays into a single process that starts lightning. “Our findings provide the first precise, quantitative explanation for how lightning initiates in nature,” Pasko said. “It connects the dots between X-rays, electric fields and the physics of electron avalanches.” This work does more than solve a scientific puzzle. It …

Astronaut snaps spectacular photo of lightning above Italy

Astronaut snaps spectacular photo of lightning above Italy

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Lightning is one of Earth’s most impressive phenomena. The sudden discharges of superheated plasma occur even in seemingly sunny conditions, rip apart air molecules, and can easily span hundreds of miles. But while there is still a lot to learn about lightning from our perspective here on Earth, there’s also much to glean by observing it from high above. And at about 250 miles above the planet, there are few better vantage points than aboard the International Space Station (ISS). NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers proved this just last summer. On July 1, 2025 the former ISS crew member documented a dramatic look at lightning over the city of Milan, Italy. The brilliantly blue bolt can be seen illuminating the inside of a storm cloud above the historic city, but glimpses like these can go far beyond simply illustrating lightning’s grandeur. “Storm observations from [the] space station help scientists study Earth’s upper atmosphere, which can improve weather models and protect communication systems …

MSI’s super-powered RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z has a huge integrated display

MSI’s super-powered RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z has a huge integrated display

Published by skeptic

I’m always keen to sample a new GPU. And while the RTX 5090 isn’t a new arrival, MSI’s new variant is. The new GeForce 5090 32G Lightning Z is one of the most powerful versions of the super-powered RTX 5090 that we’ve seen, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. You’re probably thinking, “been there, done that,” with the 5090. But MSI has brought some excellent upgrades to the world’s most powerful GPU, and it helps set the GeForce 5090 32G Lightning Z apart from the rest. Carbon fiber display panels? Yes, you read that right. This 5090 has been upgraded in a few key ways; it’s not your standard 5090. The biggest change is that MSI has designed this as an overclocking card rather than the regular retail cards we’re used to. In that, the GeForce 5090 32G Lightning Z comes with some key upgrades that can help you push its performance past a regular 5090. Specifically, MSI’s GeForce 5090 32G Lightning Z features an integrated liquid-cooling system, so you don’t …