Ultra-fast lightning video shot at 360,000 fps

A researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences succeeded in capturing the moment when lightning strikes over the sky and the ground when a lightning strike occurs using ultra-high-speed photography of 1/380,000 seconds per frame.

When it comes to lightning, it is easy to think of a lightning bolt that literally extends from a thundercloud and falls to the floor, but in reality it generates a powerful lightning to connect one of several lightning strikes from the ground to the ground.

Air is a powerful insulator, but thunderclouds cool the moisture in the air in the ascending air, creating fine ice crystals. This separates the positive and negative charges promoted from each other by the airflow. And negative charges are collected at the bottom of the thundercloud, and positive charges are induced near the ground. It starts with a thunder sound as a discharge phenomenon occurs between the clouds where the electric field strength increases.

This discharge phenomenon causes air insulation breakdown. When the discharge becomes stronger and reaches the ground, an ascending discharge is launched from the ground side, and both sides are connected and injected into the sky. This is a phenomenon called lightning. There are many lightning strikes in the thundercloud, but there is only one discharge on the ground, and it is not possible to predict where the junction will form.

The study identified lightning strikes on a 325m high weather observation tower in Beijing. It can be seen that lightning is connected to the midpoint between the sky lightning and the discharge on the ground, completing the path through which the charge flows, and strong luminescence by intense energy occurs.

In more detail, if the lower lightning and the upper discharge approach each other within a distance of 23m, they form a path as if they move the distance rather than a connection. The research team has not been clear until now whether the tip of the lightning split by a few degrees is connected to the discharge on the ground like a bunch, or whether only one in the middle of the branch is connected and becomes lightning, but the second scenario, that is, various It shows that one thinner like a solid is the final connection point.

The research team said that the results of this study can be used to improve understanding of lightning disasters and to support changes and improvements in models of lightning strikes, and that observations are needed to learn more about the phenomenon. Related information can be found here .