In a small lab at Penn State University, lightning may be happening on a scale smaller than a deck of cards. Victor Pasko, a professor of electrical engineering, and his team have shown that under certain conditions, everyday solid materials like acrylic, quartz, and bismuth germanate can host lightning-like electrical discharges. The discovery challenges long-standing ideas that lightning only forms in massive storm clouds and opens the door to studying extreme electrical phenomena in a tabletop setting. “Using a high-powered electron source, lightning can be triggered in everyday insulating materials,” Pasko explained. The study applies models traditionally used to study thunderstorms to much denser, compact materials. The result is what the researchers describe as “mini-lightning,” a rapid, intense electrical discharge inside solids. Electrons accelerated to relativistic speeds in a dielectric material can produce bursts of x rays, similar to a phenomenon found in thunderstorms. (CREDIT: APS) Shrinking a Storm Thunderstorms produce electric potentials of about 100 million volts across kilometers of cloud. In contrast, the Penn State team found that blocks of acrylic, quartz, and …