summoning a lightning strike!

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…

From the Theoi Project website, "Zeus"

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!