Lightning—Fertilizer Extraordinary

Science has now learned that the immediate beneficial service performed by lightning is that of fertilizing the soil. Describing the process, Science Digest for July, 1956, says: “Lightning is the world’s greatest producer of nitrogen compounds, the soil ingredient without which most plant life on earth could not exist. As each bolt sears through the air, the terrific heat it generates unites nitrogen and oxygen chemically to form nitrogen oxide, which ultimately combines with additional oxygen and with water to be transformed into nitric acid and nitrates. In very dilute forms, these compounds fall to earth with rain. It has been estimated that over all the earth’s surface, lightning annually produces up to 100 million tons of nitrogen compounds. That amount is many, many times the quantity turned out by all the fertilizer plants in the world. It’s even considered possible that without lightning, virtually all plant life on earth might actually wither and die.” As with many other things that science is now learning, the discovery that lightning electrically fertilizes the soil confirms the Bible as the book of true science and proves that its Author is Jehovah, the all-wise Creator. For it was Jehovah himself who posed the question to Job: “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass?”—Job 38:25, 27, RS.