From volume one of Sharon of Two Salems, page 11:
"Squinting, she tried even harder to imagine electricity dropping down from space.
"A bolt of blue lightning plunged out of the hazy sky and struck the metal of her car’s hood. The engine roared to life. The lightning held on for a moment, then disappeared."
This is going to be a far stretch, between discussing real lightning and the possibility of someone being able to control it...with their mind!
There are a few problems with lightning called down from outer space in Sharon of Two Salems. First and foremost, lightning…as we know it…cannot exist in the vacuum of outer space. From the entry "Lightning Discharge" in Wikipedia is this description:
"Once a conductive channel bridges the ionized air between the negative charges in the cloud and the positive surface charges below, a massive electrical discharge follows. Neutralization of positive surface charges occurs first. An enormous current of positive charges races up the ionic channel towards the thundercloud. This is the 'return stroke' and it is the most luminous and noticeable part of the lightning discharge."
Air, therefore, is a necessary part of lightning. And, as described in Wikipedia, most of luminosity of a lightning strike comes from the charges that are traveling upward from the positively charged surface…so lightning does not travel downwards. Additionally, lightning only travels about ⅓ the speed of light. The star that the character, Sharon Miller, calls lightning from is approximately 129 light years from Earth. This would mean that even if lightning could travel through outer space, it would take 387 years to reach us!
No spoilers, but later in the book, scientists conclude that it can't really be true lightning that Sharon is generating. For all of the above reasons. Let's just consider the idea of PEOPLE generating any kind of electrical discharge using some unknown power of their minds…
Armed with a lightning bolt in his left hand, the idea of someone being able to create lightning pretty much only belongs to the character, Zeus, from mythology. There have been many experiments done with people that claimed psychic powers, but I'll have to keep searching for ones done with those who claim they could create electricity. I couldn't find anything!
A model of 'folded' space-time illustrates how a wormhole bridge might form with at least two mouths that are connected to a single throat or tube. Credit: edobric | Shutterstock
In Sharon of Two Salems: Vol. 2: Lightning Always Strikes Twice, on pages 1 and 2:
"...the old car...had already made two trips to the moon and back, and was even capable of instantaneous space travel.
"The latter Sharon just barely understood; that it could be done only where the concentration of surrounding stars was great enough to create some kind of 'grid.' Once they explained that they had never traveled to the next galaxy over because there weren’t enough stars in between, she’d formed a primitive concept in her head of how it worked. The nitty-gritty physics part of it, though, she hadn’t even tried to comprehend."
The fictional physics in the book require that there has to be a certain concentration of stars in order for the three-dimensional grid that allows instantaneous space travel to occur. Three subatomic particles, unknown to Earth scientists, combine at the center of very large stars, and this is what causes the "grid" to connect to other nearby, large stars. In between the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy, however, the concentration of stars drops off rapidly and the grid stops forming at a certain low concentration.
This is truly fictional. The closest thing we know to even faster-than-light space travel is in the realm of theoretical physics, and it involves "wormholes." Even traveling through such a phenomenon would take at least a little bit of time...not "instantaneous" at all!
This is how it's postulated that a wormhole might work (from "What is a Wormhole?" on space.com, by Nola Taylor Redd, April 13, 2015) --
"A wormhole is a theoretical passage through space-time that could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. Wormholes are predicted by the theory of general relativity. But be wary: wormholes bring with them the dangers of sudden collapse, high radiation and dangerous contact with exotic matter...
"In 1935, physicists Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen used the theory of general relativity to propose the existence of 'bridges' through space-time. These paths, called Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormholes, connect two different points in space-time, theoretically creating a shortcut that could reduce travel time and distance... Wormholes contain two mouths, with a throat connecting the two. The mouths would most likely be spheroidal... Einstein's theory of general relativity mathematically predicts the existence of wormholes, but none have been discovered to date...
"Science fiction is filled with tales of traveling through wormholes. But the reality of such travel is more complicated, and not just because we've yet to spot one.
"The first problem is size. Primordial wormholes are predicted to exist on microscopic levels, about 10–33 centimeters. However, as the universe expands, it is possible that some may have been stretched to larger sizes.
"Another problem comes from stability. The predicted Einstein-Rosen wormholes would be useless for travel because they collapse quickly. But more recent research found that a wormhole containing 'exotic' matter could stay open and unchanging for longer periods of time.
"Exotic matter, which should not be confused with dark matter or antimatter, contains negative energy density and a large negative pressure. Such matter has only been seen in the behavior of certain vacuum states as part of quantum field theory.
"If a wormhole contained sufficient exotic matter, whether naturally occurring or artificially added, it could theoretically be used as a method of sending information or travelers through space.
"Wormholes may not only connect two separate regions within the universe, they could also connect two different universes...
"'A wormhole is not really a means of going back in time, it's a short cut, so that something that was far away is much closer,' NASA's Eric Christian wrote.
"Although adding exotic matter to a wormhole might stabilize it to the point that human passengers could travel safely through it, there is still the possibility that the addition of 'regular' matter would be sufficient to destabilize the portal.
"Today's technology is insufficient to enlarge or stabilize wormholes, even if they could be found. However, scientists continue to explore the concept as a method of space travel with the hope that technology will eventually be able to utilize them."
