More than 300 reindeer corpses were found piled up and strewn across the mountainside, in a natural massacre that Norwegian officials are calling the deadliest lightning strike in their country's history. Of course, lightning strikes are not uncommon, nor are animals getting killed by them. Sheep, cattle, bison, geese, elephants, and even seals have been struck down by the dozens. So it's really the scale of the Norway event that is puzzling experts.

At this time, the Norwegian Environmental Agency has not released details of the investigation, but some scientists are formulating a few theories of their own. And they all involve some very basic principles of electromagnetism.

When Glenn Shaw saw the news from Norway over the weekend, he felt deja vu. A now-retired lightning researcher, he remembered being in a helicopter flying over the Alaska Range back in 1972 and coming upon a similarly grisly scene: 53 dead caribou on the side of a mountain.