Despite the huge impact of lightning, its fundamental properties are still very poorly understood. Within this project we will build an infrastructure of carefully designed laboratory experiments in a novel physical regime, that will provide the conditions required to understand lightning phenomena. You will use this to answer some of the major open questions in lightning and high voltage discharge research. You will provide major scientific breakthroughs to answer the questions on how lightning is initiated or how the so-called leaders and streamers emit energetic radiation (X-rays).