In video: The amazing impact of lightning in slow motion

July 23, 2012
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A series of videos posted by photographer Tom A. Warner, show in detail what happens when lightning strikes the surface of Earth.

The images were recorded at 7,207 frames per second, which shows in detail what to the human eye is a simple flash.

Lightning is an electrostatic discharge that arises from an imbalance of electrical charge between two points, sometimes between two clouds, sometimes between a cloud and the ground.

In the video we see how the beam begins “creating multiple ionization channels, which branch from an agglomeration of charged particles to the friction between a cloud and the air has been removing electrons,” experts say.

“After a few milliseconds of the multiple branches reaches the ground, and the total discharge occurs. The air in contact with the jet energy is ionized and becomes the current drive as if it were a wire,” they add.

“This makes vast amounts of electrons traveling between the two contact points in-between the cloud and the ground-and an explosion, which is what then we can hear and is known as thunder” they conclude.

Some spectacular images captured by Warner, have become part of the NASA daily astronomical photo collection.