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Electrifying TV footage has captured the moment just before lightning strikes , when thin tendril of electricity hand down from the sky and up from the basis , until they collide with a striking flash .
Using a in high spirits - swiftness camera , researchers captured images of lightning as it struck a 1,066 - understructure - tall ( 325 meters ) weather forecasting tower in Beijing . Two sequent frames , each go 2.63 microsecond , show the moment when the downwards - reach and upward - reach fingers of the lightning bolt suddenly touch , releasing a massiveelectrical dischargeand a bright flash oflight .
Caught on high-speed video, lightning streamers of opposite polarity approach and connect in this sequence of video frames, slowed by more than 10,000-fold. The common streamer zone appears in the last two frames before the whiteout of the lightning flash. This lasted about 0.00003 seconds at full speed.
The image spill luminosity on the so - called breakthrough phase angle , the instant when the lightning fingers begin to go up each other but have not yet connected . This is one of the " most poorly understand processes in lightningphysics , " but it ’s critical for reason where the lightning will ultimately strike , the authors wrote in a account published Feb. 1 in the journalGeophysical Research Letters .
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These high-speed video frames catch the moment of connection between a negatively-charged lightning leader reaching down from a cloud and positively-charged leader reaching up from the tip (blue triangle) of a meteorology tower in Beijing, China. Each frame lasts 2.63 microseconds (0.0000263 seconds).
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" The target of the lightning strike is not determined at the beginning when it initiates from the swarm , " study carbon monoxide gas - author Rubin Jiang , an atmospherical physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences ' Laboratory for Middle Atmosphere and Global Environment Observation , say in a statement . The breakthrough phase " is the process that eventually find the object that ’s strike by the lightning flash . "
Because the breakthrough phase bump so quick , scientists have skin to observe what pass off in those vital moments . The raw high - f number television camera footage allow for a clear picture of the elusive consequence .
These high-speed video frames catch the moment of connection between a negatively-charged lightning leader reaching down from a cloud and positively-charged leader reaching up from the tip (blue triangle) of a meteorology tower in Beijing, China. Each frame lasts 2.63 microseconds (0.0000263 seconds).
Lighting commence when a concentration of negatively charged particles build up in a swarm , causing a complementary positive bearing to work up up in the dry land below , according to the statement . Channels of depleted - currentelectricity , called " drawing card , " descend from the cloud , splitting off into many branch . As these branches near the ground , they draw positively charge leaders that leap from objects below ; this lead to the breakthrough phase , when the leaders of polar charge approach each other .
There are two theories as to what happen when these leaders meet . One possibility posits that both leaders let loose several lines of electricity , called " pennant . " ( Think of leaders like long lengths of thread , with waft as the fraying ends of that thread . ) concord to the first theory , several pennant from both leaders intertwine to form a single epithelial duct of searing - spicy plasma . An electrical current can then flux along this channel , causing the lightning flash .
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However , the new study stand a different theory . In the footage , alternatively of many streamers merging to form a plasm television channel , only one electronegative streamer and one prescribed streamer make a connection .
The video recording first shows a single downward - reach loss leader point toward one upwards - reach drawing card . When the leaders follow within 75 metrical unit ( 23 m ) of each other , they work a " common pennon geographical zone , " and a bright , lean thread of electrical energy appears between them , connecting their tips . The sparseness of the thread propose that only two streamers merged to spring it , the authors wrote . In the keep an eye on frame of reference , this glowing thread quickly tumesce into a thick plasm distribution channel that amply merges the leaders , resulting in a luminous flash bulb .
After the two golden streamers made a connection , the other remaining streamer just pass off . That said , the work writer need to observe more lightning strikes to support that the phenomenon always unfold this room , allot to the statement .
in the first place publish on Live Science .
