The camera took a photo of some lightning rods trying to connect to an electric force going down. The two beams in the picture were from the same lightning that hit the building on the right.
A physicist and a Ph.D. student from INPE in Brazil managed to get an amazing picture of a lightning strike that showed how it connected to nearby buildings. They had the luck of being at the right place, at the right time, and had fast camera equipment to capture this rare scene.
The image was so special that it was printed on the front of a science magazine called Geophysical Research Letters. It even included an article written by Saba, who had help from an organization called FAPESP for their research related to this topic.
On a summer night in São José dos Campos, Brazil, a massive lightning bolt went toward the ground at 370 km per second. As it neared the ground, lightning rods and tall things on nearby buildings shot out positive energy to try to meet the bolt from below. A photo was taken 25 thousandths of a second before this happened, which became the cover for a journal.
He used a super fast camera that captures 40,000 frames in one second. When you watch the video played back in slow-motion, it shows how lightning works and how dangerous it can be if safety systems aren’t set up correctly. Even though there were more than 30 lightning rods nearby, the strike connected to a smokestack on top of one building instead.
“The installation was flawed, so this area didn’t have proper protection,” he said. “A single 30,000-amp discharge did a lot of harm!”
We took a very close video of lightning attaching to a building’s lightning rod. The people responsible for the video are Marcelo Saba and Diego Rhamon.
Lightning strikes are divided into two types: ones that occur within clouds (80%) and ones between a cloud and the ground (20%). These ground strikes can then be split into either positive or negative based on the charge transferred to the ground. Also, lightning can even come from tall structures like mountains and skyscrapers.
Saba explained that lightning strikes can be super long, up to 100 km. They also bring intense electric power, equal to the energy used by 30,000 100-watt light bulbs at one time. Most amazing is that in some cases it can reach up to 300,000 amps! And also the temperature of a typical lightning strike is incredibly hot – up to 30,000 Celsius – five times hotter than the surface of the sun!
“The Magical Power of the Lightning Strike
It all starts with something called cloud electrification. This is when ice, water drops, and hail rub together, releasing charges that create a strong electrical potential between different parts of the cloud. This electric potential can range from 100 million volts up to 1 billion volts!
Remember that storm clouds are really big! The base of the clouds can be as low as 2 to 3 kilometers off the ground, while their top edges can reach up to 20 kilometers high. The size of the clouds can range from 10 to 20 kilometers wide.
When lightning strikes, it normally moves in a zigzag path – instead of taking the straightest line. This happens because the atmosphere is not “even” or “homogeneous”. In other words, different parts of the atmosphere have different electrical properties. The whole strike usually lasts about 2 seconds, but each individual part (“discharge”) only takes fractions of a second. According to Saba, that’s how it works.
Lightning rods don’t pull in lightning strikes and they don’t push away the clouds. Instead, they give lightning a safe way of getting to the ground.
During the summer months and especially in tropical areas, storms often come in the afternoons. It’s important to find a safe place indoors or in a car if you hear thunder. If no shelter is available, you should crouch down with your hands and feet touching each other instead of standing straight up or lying flat. And don’t forget to stay away from any appliances at home and landline phones as well!
It is possible to survive being hit by lightning. In fact, many people have done so! Your odds go up if there’s someone around who can help you fast. The only way that lightning can really hurt you is when your heart stops working – in which case an expert would tell you to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
In 2003, Saba started researching lightning with the help of high-speed cameras. He and his students have continued building a library of videos showing lightning filmed in slow motion which became the most extensive collection across all countries. FAPESP honored them with 17 awards and scholarship.
An experiment by a group of researchers in December 2022 was funded by a foundation called the São Paulo Research Foundation. They wanted to find out more about lightning and how it attaches itself – and published their findings in an article called “Close View of the Lightning Attachment Process Unveils the Streamer Zone Fine Structure”.
