In honor of last night’s crazily intense and prolonged lightning storm in NYC (which just had to happen due to the outright oppressive heat we’ve had over the past few days), I’m posting a link to footage of lightning striking a plane. As its on a government site, I believe that its the real deal. Scary stuff.
Via Chris
2 thoughts on “Light Up The Sky”
The picture is most likely legit. Aircraft build up huge amounts of static electricity during flight (they have no way to safely discharge it till they land) so they are often involved in lightning strikes. Modern aircraft design takes this into account, and a lightning strike rarely (there are definitely exceptions to this) causes serious problems.
I knew that Air Force training would come in handy somewhere.
Very interesting. How does the modern craft absorb that much energy? What does it do to prevent that charge from overwhelming the craft?
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