THE LIGHTNING LAB CONCEPT

The Nevada Lightning Laboratory will be the world’s largest high voltage test facility, opening new research opportunities into electrical physics at the megascale. A twin set of Tesla Coil transformers will be capable of generating controlled lightning discharges over 300 feet in length. Located approximately 10mi south of Boulder Dam in southern Nevada, the Lightning Lab will support new industrial and scientific research, allowing researchers to re-create many forms of large scale electrical phenomena found only in natural electrical discharges, such as lightning and the aurora borealis.

Historically, new instruments produce new discoveries, and often raise more questions than they answer. The Nevada Lightning Laboratory will be the first machine capable of triggering a wide range of electrical phenomena that exist only in nature -- effects that until now have escaped observation in conventional laboratories since they require millions of volts and hundreds of feet of open space to fully develop.

(How Does It Work?) 

Scientific Motivations.  New satellite evidence suggests that Relativity plays a key role in the creation of lightning, giving lightning strikes range capabilities far beyond standard laboratory-scale discharges. The Lightning Lab will be the first facility large enough to generate relativistic discharges, providing opportunities to study, and possibly control, the mechanisms of natural lightning.

RHESSI Satellite data, mapping relativistic gamma ray bursts (X’s) to lightning activity (red) (Smith et al., 2005)

Public Education.  Beyond our scientific mission, an essential goal of the Lightning Lab is to inspire scientific curiosity and emphasize the importance of science.  Towards this goal the Lightning Lab will produce a series of unique scientific lectures for the general public, demonstrating electrical physics on an unprecedented scale.  As funding allows, our educational program will expand to include interactive public exhibits, an electrical museum, a scientific lecture series featuring invited speakers, and student internships.