Scientists said Monday they have used a laser beam to guide lightning for the first time, hoping the technique will help protect against deadly bolts—and one day maybe even trigger them.

Lightning strikes between 40-120 times a second worldwide, killing more than 4,000 people and causing billions of dollars worth of damage every year.

Yet the main protection against these bolts from above is still the humble lightning rod, which was first conceived by American polymath Benjamin Franklin in 1749.

A team of scientists from six research institutions have been working for years to use the same idea but replace the simple metal pole with a far more sophisticated and precise laser.

Now, in a study published in the journal Nature Photonics, they describe using a laser beam—shot...

Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by...

Bosons, one of the two fundamental classes of particles, have been the focus of countless physics studies. When bosonic particles are transitioning into an already occupied final quantum state, the rate of this transition is enhanced by its so-called “occupation number,” an effect known as bosonic stimulation. The appearance of bosonic stimulation in light scattering processes was first predicted over three decades ago, yet directly observing it in experimental settings has so far proved challenging.

Researchers at the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracol...

Scientists unveil a unified theory for rocky planet formation. A new theory for how rocky planets form could explain the origin of so-called “super-Earths” – a class of exoplanets a few times more massive than the Earth that are the most abundant type of planet in the galaxy.

Further, it could explain why super-Earths within a single planetary system often wind up looking strangely similar in size, as though each system were only capable of producing a single kind of planet.

“As our observations of exoplanets have grown over the past decade, it has become clear that the standard theory of planet formation needs to be revised, starting with the fundamentals...