Can Lightning Travel Through a Vacuum?

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    Lightning Vacuum
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SUMMARY

Lightning cannot travel through a vacuum due to the absence of air or gas necessary for the plasma formation that characterizes lightning. In a vacuum, there is no medium to facilitate the heating and ionization of air, which is essential for the generation of light and heat associated with lightning. While electrical currents can flow in a vacuum when a strong enough electric field is present, this phenomenon is distinct from lightning, which requires atmospheric conditions to occur.

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  • Understanding of plasma physics
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  • Familiarity with the properties of vacuum environments
  • Basic principles of lightning formation and behavior
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  • Study the behavior of electrical fields in vacuum environments
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jobyts
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Can lightning travel through vacuum? Does sitting in a vacuum chamber reduce/increase/no effect the probability of being hit by lightning?

If lightning can travel through vacuum, I would imagine there wouldn't be any heat or light - hence it would be just an electric shock. True?
 
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No - lightning is the plasma from air that has been heated enough to lose it's electrons and glow white hot.
In a perfect vacuum there is no air (or other gas) to glow so no lightning.
You can have an electrical current flowing in a vacuum once the field gets large enough to pull electrons off the surface of an electrode and then dragged by the field to another electrode.
 

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